Law Commons^™

Putin Skirts The Icc: The Invasion Of Ukraine And The Symbolic Power Of International Law, Corbin Gregg

CICLR Online

Much can be said about the role of international law in shaping the behavior of states and leaders. Often maligned, international organizations face criticism from those who wish to see them do more: punish human rights violations, sanction aggressive state actors, and prevent wars of aggression. While these are overall purported goals of international organizations, the way they attempt to effectuate change is sometimes unclear. Nowhere is this more true than the way the international organizations have reacted to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on December 26, …

Testing The Boundaries Of Torture: Forced Circumcision As A Crime Against Humanity, Marina Coriale

CICLR Online

Female genital mutilation (FGM) has history that extends across countless cultures and regions, impacting women and girls around the world still searching for redress and reparations. Knowing this, the international community should understand the necessity of providing a space for FGM survivors in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on December 4, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.

Vietnam's "Entire People Ownership" Of Land: Theory And Practice, Phan Trung Hien, Hugh D. Spitzer

Articles

The Constitution of Vietnam declares that “[t]he Socialist Republic of Vietnam State is a socialist rule of law State of the People, by the People, and for the People.” It also states that land is “under ownership by the entire people represented and uniformly managed by the State.” This means the entire people of Vietnam are collective landowners and the Vietnam State is their “representative.” Given that, how might the public execute its real ownership—rather than treating “people’s ownership” as just a slogan? This article analyzes the gaps in theory and practice in Vietnam, a country with a robust market …

Tech Supremacy: The New Arms Race Between China And The United States, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

In the brewing tech war between the United States and China, the quest for tech supremacy is in full force. Through enacting a series of laws and policies, China aims to reach its goal of tech supremacy. If China succeeds, U.S. corporations will face a daunting task in competing against Chinese products and services in core industries and in sectors where artificial intelligence and technological breakthroughs reign. This Article is the first to identify and analyze China’s 2022 Law on Science and Technology Progress, Personal Information Protection Law, Made in China 2025, National Intellectual Property Strategies, and digital currency e-CNY; …

Climate Change In The Courts: A 2023 Retrospective, Maria Antonia Tigre, Margaret Barry

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Drawing from the jurisdictions covered in the Sabin Center's United States (U.S.) and Global Climate Litigation databases, this report offers insights into key developments, emerging themes, evolving legal strategies, and the pulse of climate litigation in 2023.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Animal Protection Laws In The United States And Switzerland, Kelly Ziyu Xia

CICLR Online

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” This statement underlines the significance of how a society cares for those under its dominion, particularly those who are defenseless. Animal welfare laws vary widely across the globe, reflecting the diverse approaches taken by different countries to protect the interests of animals. While the United States has made commendable strides, the current legal framework for animal protection remains inadequate. Both Switzerland and the United States have federal laws that aim to protect animal welfare, but …

Applicants Beware: Chinese Trademark Fraud Is Rampant, And It Is Affecting U.S. Trademarks, Lily Barash

CICLR Online

If you are looking to file a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), you should raise your vigilance. When the COVID-19 pandemic sent people in the United States into emergency lockdown, brick and mortar businesses closed their doors and people started opening their minds. People found new, and more, ways to be creative and e-commerce began to boom. With budding ideas, creators and companies recognized the imperativeness of protecting their intellectual property. The USPTO announced that as of June 17, 2021, it had experienced an increase of roughly 63% in trademark applications filed over the …

Out Of The Shadows: The Need For Increased Scrutiny Of Shadow Banking In China, Benson M. Clements

CICLR Online

Zhongrong International Trust Co., a Chinese investment trust with significant real estate exposure, has missed payments on dozens of corporate trust products since late July. Retail investors are left with frustration and panic as they fear they may have lost their life savings. Regulators are concerned they may have to further tame an already faltering economy. It may be time to question the free reign with which shadow banks have enjoyed for decades.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on November 14, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link …

Writer V. Big Pharma: How John Green, Author And Youtuber, Fought The Evergreening Of A Drug Patent, Rachel Bier

CICLR Online

Tuberculosis (TB), an illness caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is the deadliest disease in human history. In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists developed several drugs that could treat TB. These developments meant that TB became a curable disease. However, TB remains a terrible epidemic in poor communities around the world. About 4,000 people die from TB every day, with over eighty percent of those deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on November 9, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button …

The Relationship Between Constitutional Equality And Substantive Review, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

General equality rights in written constitutions – rights stating the ideal of equality without specifying categories of impermissible differentiation – have often been effected through the idea of equality as rationality. Equality as rationality demands that differentiations between like entities have to be rationally justifiable. Such equality rights are applicable to legislation and executive action. This presents a prima facie overlap with substantive review in common law administrative law, since substantive review is also concerned about the rational justifiability of executive action. This raises three questions: (1) Are both sets of legal principles indeed similar? (2) Have courts managed to …

Higher Wages In A High Inflation World: What The United States Can Learn From Icelandic Unionization, Jack Berroug

CICLR Online

Since March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the entire world, inflation has slowly been on the rise. OECD countries across the globe immediately felt the effects of inflation and despite the increase in wages amongst workers globally, inflation outpaced nominal wage growth for many countries. Over the past couple years, many of the capitalist OECD countries have dealt with inflation in various ways with varying degrees of success. One capitalist country in particular has kept up with real wage growth despite inflation: Iceland. Iceland is the most unionized country in the world with 90 percent of its workplace …

From Maritime Pushbacks To Naval Blockade: How Europe Is Drowning In Legal Pitfalls, Martine Bjørnstad

CICLR Online

As if haunted by the past, the headlines are once again filled with cautionary tales of Europe’s unsecure borders and looming migration crisis. The arrival of 11,000 migrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa in early September, amidst deadlocked negotiations over the European Union’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum, has again sparked debate in Europe about how to tackle illegal immigration from North Africa. The proposed solution that has perhaps drawn the most attention is that of a naval blockade.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on October 25, 2023. The original …

Island States Turn To The Law To Fight Climate Change, Adam Auerbach

CICLR Online

The sea is rising. 2023 has seen the highest annual average sea level in recorded history, with sea level measuring four inches above 1993 levels. To many, this may seem inconsequential. However, for those in developing countries, particularly small island nations, rising sea levels present a very real, very pressing threat. For these island countries, the danger of losing their statehood and sovereignty is all too real “as their land surface may be totally covered by the sea or become fully inhabitable” in the near future.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on …

Collaboration, Exclusion, And Refuge: Ftx’S Cross-Border Insolvency Strategies, Ethan Ashley

CICLR Online

The recent collapse of FTX and ensuing insolvency proceedings in the United States has stoked conversation regarding the administration of cross-border cryptocurrency insolvencies. In the case of FTX, insolvency proceedings in the United States, Australia, Turkey, and the Bahamas have demonstrated an unprecedented global footprint for a cryptocurrency exchange. As a result, these proceedings will have long-lasting impacts and may serve as a road map for how regulators and administrators can cooperate and navigate competing regulatory pressures and proceedings in the future.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on October 2, 2023. The …

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

The Right To Access Information On Land Recovery, Compensation, Assistance, And Resettlement: Case Study, City Of Can Tho, Vietnam, Hien Trung Phan, Hugh D. Spitzer

Articles

Land recovery in Vietnam is the process of compulsory transfer of land use rights from the hands of land users to the hands of the State by way of local government agencies. Land recovery frequently raises issues of compensation, assistance, and resettlement. It is vital for affected land users and the general public to have access to reports on land recovery, compensation, and resettlement. The article describes a limited survey of Vietnamese people whose land was subject to government recovery and evaluates their access to and understanding of information at each stage of the land recovery process. The study revealed …

A Crazy Quilt: Infanticide In The United States, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter builds on previous research to present a sampling of cases in the US, primarily in the twenty-first century, in order to show the harshness and disparity in criminal charges, defences and sentences. The broad term ‘infanticide’ is used for child-murder cases, and the more specific term ‘neonaticide’ is used for the killing of a child in the first 24 hours after birth. This chapter also describes the more recent use of genetic genealogy to solve cold cases of neonaticide. It concludes by considering how the absence of an infanticide offence and expanded defences results in an incoherent, unjust …

Four Pathbreaking Women Judges To Participate In Iu Conference And Public Discussion Monday, Sept. 25, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Four distinguished women judges from the Middle East and North Africa—including the first female judge in Jordanian history—will visit the Indiana University Bloomington campus Sept. 25-26 for a conference titled “Women Judges in Dialogue,” where they will discuss their own experience as women in the judiciary as well as issues surrounding constitutional adjudication in the region. They will be joined by faculty from the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and the Maurer School of Law.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME) at HLS and the Center for Constitutional Democracy (CCD) …

Modular Bankruptcy: Toward A Consumer Scheme Of Arrangement, John A. E. Pottow

Law & Economics Working Papers

The world of international bankruptcy has seen increasing use of the versatile scheme of arrangement, a form of corporate reorganization available under English law. A key feature of the scheme is its modularity, whereby a debtor can restructure only a single class of debt, such as bond indentures, without affecting other debt, such as trade. This is the opposite of chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code’s comprehensive reckoning of all financial stakeholders. This article considers a novel idea: could the scheme be transplanted into the consumer realm? It argues that it could and should. Substantial benefits of more individually …

Beyond The North–South Divide: Litigation's Role In Resolving Climate Change Loss And Damage Claims, Maria Antonia Tigre, Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Within the international climate regime, legal aspects surrounding loss and damage (L&D) are contentious topics, implicating liability, compensation and notions of vulnerability. The attribution of responsibility and the pursuit of redress for L&D present intricate legal and governance challenges. The ongoing debates under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are characterized by a pronounced North–South divide and have done little to provide tangible support to those most affected by L&D. This apparent neglect has prompted exploration of alternative avenues for climate harm redress. The burgeoning field of litigation for liability and compensation of climate harm holds potential significance …

Future-Proofing U.S. Laws For War Crimes Investigations In The Digital Era, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Advances in information technology have irrevocably changed the nature of war crimes investigations. The pursuit of accountability for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community now invariably requires access to digital evidence. The global reach of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter means that much of that digital evidence is held by U.S. social media companies, and access to it is subject to the U.S. Stored Communications Act.

This is the first Article to look at the legal landscape facing international investigators seeking access to digital evidence regarding genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. It …

A Further Look At A Hague Convention On Concurrent Proceedings, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The current project of the Hague Conference on Private International Law has reached a critical juncture that requires careful consideration of the terms that delineate the scope of the proposed convention. Work to date has not followed the mandate of the Council on General Affairs and Policy to produce a convention that would deal with concurrent proceedings, understood as including pure parallel proceedings and related actions. In two previous articles we have addressed the practical needs that should be addressed by the concurrent proceedings project and the general architecture of such a convention. The process is now mired in terminological …

Global Climate Litigation Report: 2023 Status Review, Michael Burger, Maria Antonia Tigre

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This Global Climate Litigation Report: 2023 Status Review, which updates previous United Nations Environment Programme reports published in 2017 and 2020, provides an overview of the current state of climate change litigation and an update of global climate change litigation trends. It provides judges, lawyers, advocates, policymakers, researchers, environmental defenders, climate activists, human rights activists (including women’s rights activists), NGOs, businesses and the international community with an essential resource to understand the current state of global climate litigation, including descriptions of the key issues that courts have faced in the course of climate change cases.

Transnational Insights For Climate Litigation At The European Court Of Human Rights: A South-North Perspective In Pursuit Of Climate Justice, Melanie Murcott, Maria Antonia Tigre, Nesa Zimmermann

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The global climate crisis is increasingly recognised as an issue of climate injustice, including because it is causing (and worsening) inequalities and human rights violations. Moreover, responsibility for emissions and vulnerability to climate impacts are not evenly distributed. They vary among and within states. In order to tackle these issues of justice both within and among states, litigants have taken to domestic and regional courts to engage in climate litigation. A body of transnational climate jurisprudence is emerging in which courts are increasingly looking to laws beyond their relevant state or region, engaging with the moral aims of human rights …

Romano Named A Rumsfeld Graduate Fellow, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

James Romano’s interests are out of this world. The 2L at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law is intrigued by the futuristic sounding concept of space law, but is quick to note that there’s nothing futuristic about it.

“More private companies are rapidly entering space,” Romano said, “and I’m deeply interested in the question of ‘What does the future of space look like?’”

While Romano’s focus may be directed upward, his trajectory on Earth is quickly ascending.

Romano is one of 14 scholars selected as a Rumsfeld Foundation Graduate Fellow for 2023-24. The fellowships, named in honor of the …

Hiding Art In Freeports, Wendy Li

CICLR Online

In Tenet, one of Christopher Nolan’s time and reality bending movies, we are introduced to freeports. Robert Pattinson’s character, Neil, must steal something from a freeport and in a few scenes, through his time in the freeport’s vaults, we learn a bit on why freeports exist and what people store in them. In a tour, the guide tells Neil that clients can store anything in the freeports and the vault that they walk through holds expensive collections of paintings and artifacts. The items are “shipp[ed] to and from other freeports without customs inspection.” From there, we are brought on a …

Inspiration For How The Doj Can Handle Its Antitrust Investigation Against Ticketmaster, Brandon Simon

CICLR Online

“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me” is not something Ticketmaster would have anticipated Congress would mandate it to admit about itself, but that all changed after its botched sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming U.S. stadium tour.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on May 2, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.

Prosecuting Gender Persecution At The Icc: Definitions, Policies, And Practice, Milena Sterio, Yvonne Dutton

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article's primary goal is to highlight the International Criminal Court (ICC)'s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP)'s Gender Persecution Policy, while also demonstrating its place in the trajectory of the ICC's progress in changing the course of human history as relates to the recognition of and prosecution of sexual and gender-based (SGBV) crimes. To that end, some background is necessary to contextualize the ICC's current policy and practice as relates to the crime of gender persecution. Part II discusses the Rome Statute's unique contributions to the development of international criminal law regarding SGBV crimes, including the crime of gender persecution. …

Consumers' Perceptions Of Digital Privacy In The United States And Japan, Destiny Randle

Whittier Scholars Program

The purpose of my study is to explore the contours of contemporary consumer privacy protections derived from legislation, regulations and publicly available company policies as a way to get a better understanding of how consumer data is protected. A few examples ranging from company-based consumer protection in the United States to data breaches in Japan will be explored and examined. Finally, this paper includes a comparative survey of consumer perceptions and concerns related to personal data privacy in the U.S. and Japan. As a way to assess the degree to which digital privacy and personal data breaches have adversely influenced …

An Outlook On Whether Competition In High-Voltage Transmission Line Development Is Necessary?, Andrew Leahy

CICLR Online

Various concerns, such as climate change, supply issues, and bad actors with vast energy resources, have increased global interest in increasing power grid security and efficiency. One method to increase power grid security and efficiency that has gained popularity is using high-voltage powerlines, cables transporting energy over long distances with minimal power losses along the route. The People’s Republic of China has been at the forefront of implementing high-voltage powerlines within its borders. For example, the Changji-to-Guquan project, which began in 2019, consists of a 1,100-kV direct current line spanning 2,046 miles, “roughly the distance between Los Angeles and Cleveland.” …