Law Commons^™

M/S Bremen V Zapata Off -Shore Company: Us Common Law Affirmation Of Party Autonomy, Ronald A. Brand

Book Chapters

In the 1972 decision in M/S Bremen v Zapata Off -Shore Company, the U.S. Supreme Court brought together the development of doctrines dealing with party autonomy in choice of court and forum non conveniens. Especially when considered alongside developments favoring arbitration clauses in U.S. courts, the case provides a rich study of conflicts of laws jurisprudence in the twentieth century. This chapter begins with a discussion of fundamental elements of the development of party autonomy in U.S. law and the historical context of the law prior to The Bremen. A brief mention of how one prominent political family …

Jurisdiction Over Non-Eu Defendants: The Brussels I Article 79 Review, Ronald A. Brand

Book Chapters

When the original EU Brussels I Regulation on Jurisdiction and the Recognition of Judgments was “recast” in 2011, the Commission recommended that the application of its direct jurisdiction rules apply to all defendants in Member State courts, and not just to defendants from other Member States. This approach was not adopted, but set for reconsideration through Article 79 of the Brussels I (Recast) Regulation, which requires that the European Commission report in 2022 on the possible application of the direct jurisdiction rules of the Regulation to all defendants. Without such a change, the Recast Regulation continues to allow each Member …

A Hague Parallel Proceedings Convention: Architecture And Features, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In Paul Herrup and Ronald A. Brand, A Hague Convention on Parallel Proceedings, 63 Harvard International Law Journal Online 1(2022), available at https://harvardilj.org/2022/02/a-hague-convention-on-parallel-proceedings/ and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3894502, we argued that the Hague Conference on Private International Law should not undertake a project to require or prohibit exercise of original jurisdiction in national courts. Rather, the goal of current efforts should be to improve the concentration of parallel litigation in a “better forum,” in order to achieve efficient and complete resolution of disputes in transnational litigation. The Hague Conference is now taking this path. As the Experts Group and Working Group …

Is There A New Extraterritoriality In Intellectual Property?, Timothy R. Holbrook

Faculty Articles

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I discusses the state of the law of extraterritoriality in copyright, trademark, and patent, as it stood before the Supreme Court’s recent intervention. This review demonstrates that all three disciplines were treating extraterritoriality very differently, and none were paying much attention to the presumption against extraterritoriality. Part II reviews a tetralogy of recent Supreme Court cases, describing the Court’s attempt to formalize its approach to extraterritoriality across all fields of law. Part III analyzes the state of IP law in the aftermath of this tetralogy of extraterritoriality cases. It concludes that there has been …

A Hague Convention On Parallel Proceedings, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The Hague Conference on Private International Law has engaged in a series of projects that, if successful, could provide the framework for critical aspects of trans-national litigation in the Twenty-first Century. Thus far, the work has resulted in the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. Work now has begun to examine the need, desirability and feasibility of additional instruments in the area, with discussions of an instrument that would either require or prohibit the exercise of jurisdiction by national courts, and …

The Hague Judgments Convention In The United States: A “Game Changer” Or A New Path To The Old Game?, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The Hague Judgments Convention, completed on July 2, 2019, is built on a list of “jurisdictional filters” in Article 5(1), and grounds for non-recognition in Article 7. If one of the thirteen jurisdictional tests in Article 5(1) is satisfied, the judgment may circulate under the Convention, subject to the grounds for non-recognition found in Article 7. This approach to Convention structure is especially significant for countries considering ratification and implementation. A different structure was suggested in the initial Working Group stage of the Convention’s preparation which would have avoided the complexity of multiple rules of indirect jurisdiction, each of which …

Comparative Method And International Litigation 2020, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In this article, resulting from a presentation at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law, I apply comparative method to international litigation. I do so from the perspective of a U.S.-trained lawyer who has been involved for over 25 years in the negotiations that produced both the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. The law of jurisdiction and judgments recognition is probably most often taught in a litigation context. Nonetheless, that law has as much or more …

Borders And Bits, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Our personal data is everywhere and anywhere, moving across national borders in ways that defy normal expectations of how things and people travel from Point A to Point B. Yet, whereas data transits the globe without any intrinsic ties to territory, the governments that seek to access or regulate this data operate with territorial-based limits. This Article tackles the inherent tension between how governments and data operate, the jurisdictional conflicts that have emerged, and the power that has been delegated to the multinational corporations that manage our data across borders as a result. It does so through the lens of …

Access To Data Across Borders: The Critical Role For Congress To Play Now, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Federalism And Health Care In Canada: A Troubled Romance?, Colleen M. M. Flood, William Lahey Prof., Bryan P. Thomas

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Canadian federalism fragments health system governance. Although the Constitution has been interpreted as providing shared jurisdiction over health generally, with respect to health care, the courts have interpreted it as giving direct jurisdiction to the provinces. The federal role in health care is therefore indirect, but nevertheless potentially powerful. For example, the federal government has used its spending powers to establish the Canada Health Act (CHA), which commits funding to provinces on condition they provide first-dollar public coverage of hospital and physician services. However, in recent times, as federal contributions have declined, the CHA has been weakly enforced. …

Ancient Worries And Modern Fears: Different Roots And Common Effects Of U.S. And Eu Privacy Regulation, David Thaw, Pierluigi Perri

Articles

Much legal and technical scholarship discusses the differing views of the United States and European Union toward privacy concepts and regulation. A substantial amount of effort in recent years, in both research and policy, focuses on attempting to reconcile these viewpoints searching for a common framework with a common level of protection for citizens from both sides of Atlantic. Reconciliation, we argue, misunderstands the nature of the challenge facing effective cross-border data flows. No such reconciliation can occur without abdication of some sovereign authority of nations, that would require the adoption of an international agreement with typical tools of international …

The Resolution Of Disputes Before The Singapore International Commercial Court, Man Yip

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The jurisdictional framework of the Singapore courts has become more nuanced with the establishment of the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) on 5 January 2015 and the signing of the Hague Convention on the Choice of Court Agreements 2005 (Hague Convention) on 25 March 2015. Although the Hague Convention has yet to be incorporated in domestic law, it is expected this will happen in the near future. The SICC project, on the other hand, is part of Singapore's strategy to promote the jurisdiction as an international dispute resolution hub. In essence, the SICC is a domestic specialist court established to …

Jurisdiction, Foundations, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Advancing National Intellectual Property Policies In A Transnational Context, Marketa Trimble

Scholarly Works

The increasing frequency with which activities involving intellectual property (“IP”) cross national borders now warrants a clear definition of the territorial reach of national IP laws so that parties engaging in the activities can operate with sufficient notice of the laws applicable to their activities. Legislators, however, have not devoted adequate attention to the territorial delineation of IP law; in fact, legislators rarely draft IP statutes with any consideration of cross-border scenarios, and with few exceptions IP laws are designed with only single-country scenarios in mind. Delineating the reach of national IP laws is actually a complex matter because the …

Understanding Judgments Recognition, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The twenty-first century has seen many developments in judgments recognition law in both the United States and the European Union, while at the same time experiencing significant obstacles to further improvement of the law. This article describes two problems of perception that have prevented a complete understanding of the law of judgments recognition on a global basis, particularly from a U.S. perspective. The first is a proximity of place problem that has resulted in a failure to understand that, unlike the United States, many countries allow their own courts to hear cases based on a broad set of bases of …

Through Our Glass Darkly: Does Comparative Law Counsel The Use Of Foreign Law In U.S. Constitutional Adjudication?, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This (35 pp.) essay appears as a contribution to a law review symposium on the work of Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon in comparative law. The essay begins by asking what comparative law as a scholarly discipline might suggest about the use of foreign (or unratified or nationally "unaccepted" international law) by US courts in US constitutional adjudication. The trend seemed to be gathering steam in US courts between the early-1990s and mid-2000s, but by the late-2000s, it appeared to be stalled as a practice, notwithstanding the intense scholarly interest throughout this period.

Practical politics within the US …

Misplaced Boldness: The Avoidance Of Substance In The International Court Of Justice's Kosovo Opinion, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The International Court of Justice's Kosovo Advisory Opinion is a masterpiece of avoidance. The Court has lived to run another day, and one can only admire the judges' skill in arriving at the vacant place between difficult and clashing conclusions of substance. Still, in the wake of the Opinion, questions inevitably arise: Of what use is this document? Has it advanced a project of justice, or of law? The Opinion has done something, though not, perhaps, what it purports to do. To understand it, we must engage this cautious, crimped document in its full context-or rather, we must understand the …

Challenges To Forum Non Conveniens, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This paper was originally prepared for a Panel on Regulating Forum Shopping: Courts’ Use of Forum Non Conveniens in Transnational Litigation at the 18th Annual Herbert Rubin and Justice Rose Luttan Rubin International Law Symposium: Tug of War: The Tension Between Regulation and International Cooperation, held at New York University School of Law, October 25, 2012. The doctrines of forum non conveniens and lis alibi pendens have marked a significant difference in approach to parallel litigation in the common law and civil law worlds, respectively. The forum non conveniens doctrine has recently taken a beating. This has come (1) in …

Mass Torts And Universal Jurisdiction, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

The technologies of the present era mean that injuries have become more massive in dimension. Mass torts affect greater numbers of people and larger geographical areas. Consequently, they can cross borders, affecting the populations of multiple countries. One of the two mechanisms in tort law for remedying mass catastrophes. restricted to cases involving jus cogens violations (namely, violations of human rights so grave as to be against international customary law, or the "law of nations"), is universal jurisdiction pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

Despite the distinctive official restriction of universal jurisdiction to the criminal law domain in civilian …

Federal Judicial Center International Litigation Guide: Recognition And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This publication was prepared for the U.S. Federal Judicial Center as a guide for Federal Judges on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. It covers applicable law in federal courts, the issues raised when a foreign judgments recognition case, grounds for non-recognition (and their sources in the law), and recent developments that may affect future adjustments in the rules. The law in those states that have adopted one of the Uniform Acts is covered, as is the law in states that remain under a common law system for recognition and enforcement of judgments. Also covered is the 2005 Hague …

The Problem Of Trans-National Libel, Lili Levi

Articles

Forum shopping in trans-national libel cases-"libel tourism"- - has a chilling effect on journalism, academic scholarship, and scientific criticism. The United States and Britain (the most popular venue for such cases) have recently attempted to address the issue legislatively. In 2010, the United States passed the SPEECH Act, which prohibits recognition and enforcement of libel judgments from jurisdictions applying law less speech-protective than the First Amendment. In Britain, consultation has closed and the Parliamentary Joint Committee has issued its report on a broad-ranging libel reform bill proposed by the Government in March 2011. This Article questions the extent to which …

Meaningless Comparisons: Corporate Tax Reform Discourse In The United States, Omri Y. Marian

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the role that international comparisons play in current corporate tax reform discourse in the United States. Citing the need to make the U.S. corporate tax system more competitive, comparisons are frequently used to assess other jurisdictions' tax-competitiveness, and many legislative proposals are supported by such comparative arguments. Examining such discourse against the background of several theoretical approaches to comparative law, this article argues that, to the extent that comparisons are aimed at providing guidance for prospective reform, this purpose is not well served. Participants in the corporate tax reform discourse, from both sides of the aisle, lack …

Party Autonomy And Access To Justice In The Uncitral Online Dispute Resolution Project, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has directed its Working Group III to prepare instruments that would provide the framework for a global system of online dispute resolution (ODR). Negotiations began in December 2010 and have produced an as-yet-incomplete set of procedural rules for ODR. It is anticipated that three other documents will be prepared, addressing substantive principles to be applied in ODR, guidelines and minimum requirements for ODR providers and neutrals, and a cross-border mechanism for enforcement of the resulting ODR decisions on a global basis.

The most difficult issues in the ODR negotiations are centered …

Access-To-Justice Analysis On A Due Process Platform, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In their article, Forum Non Conveniens and The Enforcement of Foreign Judgments, Christopher Whytock and Cassandra Burke Robertson provide a wonderful ride through the landscape of the law of both forum non convenience and judgments recognition and enforcement. They explain doctrinal development and current case law clearly and efficiently, in a manner that educates, but does not overburden, the reader. Based upon that explanation, they then provide an analysis of both areas of the law and offer suggestions for change. Those suggestions, they tell us, are necessary to close the “transnational access-to-justice gap” that results from apparent differences between rules …

Significance Of The Fujimori Trial, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And Military Decisions: Counterinsurgency And Trends In The Law Of, Dan E. Stigall, Christopher L. Blakesley, Chris Jenks

Scholarly Works

The past several decades have seen a Copernican shift in the paradigm of armed conflict, which the traditional Law of International Armed Conflict (LOIAC) canon has not fully matched. Standing out in stark relief against the backdrop of relative inactivity in LOIAC, is the surfeit of activity in the field of international human rights law, which has become a dramatic new force in the ancient realm of international law. Human rights law, heretofore not formally part of the traditional juridico-military calculus, has gained ever increasing salience in that calculus. Indeed, human rights law has ramified in such a manner that …

From Federalism To Intersystemic Governance: The Changing Nature Of Modern Jurisdiction, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

At heart, this introductory essay aspires to encourage scholars who write in widely divergent areas, yet share a focus on the changing nature of jurisdiction, to engage one another more closely. From Jackson's study of "convergence, resistance, and engagement" among courts, Kingsbury's study of "global administrative law," and Bermann's analysis of "transatlantic regulatory cooperation," to Resnik's evaluation of "trans-local networks," Weiser's account of "cooperative federalism" in telecommunications law, and Thompson's concept of "collaborative corporate governance," a related set of questions is ultimately at stake: How ought we understand the reach of any given decision-maker's jurisdiction? What are the implications of …

Molecular Federalism And The Structures Of Private Lawmaking, David Snyder

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

A Solution To The Yahoo! Problem? The Ec E-Commerce Directive As A Model For International Cooperation On Internet Choice Of Law, Mark F. Kightlinger

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In May 2000, a French court decided that a French law banning the display of Nazi materials for sale applies to an auction website hosted by the California-based company Yahoo! Inc. The following year, at the request of Yahoo! Inc., a U.S. District Court declared that the French judgment was unenforceable in the United States because enforcing it would violate an important public policy-the First Amendment. These two cases have attracted considerable attention because they crystallize a difficult problem. The Internet is global. Every website potentially reaches every home on the planet. Thus, website content or activity that may be …

Conflict Of Laws In The Enforcement Of Foreign Awards And Foreign Judgments: The Public Policy Defense And Practice In U.S. Courts, Anupama Parameshwaran

LLM Theses and Essays

Public policy is one of the defenses that a court or a party may invoke in order to resist enforcement of an unjust foreign award or judgment. The purpose of this study is to analyze the status of the public policy as a defense to enforcement in the U.S and to examine its success rate. The thesis will contain suggestions to make public policy a more meaningful defense with respect to the enforcement of foreign judgments and its role in bringing about uniformity in the field of foreign judgments will be analyzed.