Law Commons^™

Always A Suspect: Law Enforcement’S Use Of Location History Data In Criminal Investigations, Aaron A. Bengart

CICLR Online

Imagine taking your dog on a walk around the neighborhood or visiting an ill parent in a nursing home and suddenly being considered a prime suspect in a serious criminal investigation. This has happened to a multitude of people over the past few years as law enforcement has increasingly used Location History data to identify perpetrators of criminal activity in every US state. For example, Zachary McCoy found himself as a suspect in a local home invasion simply for riding his bike past the house at issue multiple times on the day of the invasion. Consequently, Mr. McCoy felt obligated …

Facial Recognition Law: Why Should We Care?, Xueyang Peng

CICLR Online

What if you are a lawyer and you would like to spend an evening enjoying your favorite artist’s concert at the Radio City Music Hall? Or a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden? The first thing you should check is not the ticket price, but rather whether you, or your law firm, has made the MSG blacklist. Even though for years, the owner of MSG has been using the blacklist to exclude its enemies (and their associates) from setting foot in any MSG-owned venue, the facial recognition technology (“FRT”) just brought this practice to a new level.

This post was …

Decolonizing Legal Influence: China's Role In The Changing Landscape Of The Ethiopian Legal Profession, 2000-2018, Mekkonen Firew Ayano

Journal Articles

Over the last two decades, the legal profession in Ethiopia has changed fundamentally. The government has increased the number of law schools from one in 1993 to more than three dozen by 2021. It has introduced strict licensure rules to formalize and regulate legal services and, more recently, in 2022, it has proclaimed the creation of law firms and an independent bar association. The market for legal services has expanded, allowing lawyers to reach out to clients in the country’s peripheries and move onward to attract global clients. These changes are inextricably tied to global currents that have diffused Anglo-American …

Privacy Enforcement In Action: Eu Regulators And Us Attorneys General Take On Big Tech, Benjamin Wade

CICLR Online

In the twenty first century, it is impossible to avoid using internet capable devices and programs in our everyday lives. As a result, significant amounts of personal data have become more accessible than ever before, putting the privacy of countless people at risk. To protect user privacy, companies providing services must limit the accessibility of personal data and comply with existing data privacy and protection laws. If they fail to do so, regulators and law enforcement agencies must ensure proper compliance.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on March 22, 2023. The original …

Duty-Free Shopping: Comparing Tax-Free Travel Restrictions Of The Eu And The United States, Sarah Lerche

CICLR Online

If you have been to an airport, you have likely come across the heavily stocked, halogen lit, mini shopping malls just across from your departing gate. Affixed with the large “Duty-Free” logo, these tempting variety stores lure travelers in with their notorious “tax-free" goods, that “typically offer a distinct assortment of luxury goods-like alcohol, jewelry, and beauty products-to outbound international travelers.” But the question looms, whether these duty-free shops are actually saving customers money, and how countries restrict such purchases throughout international travel. This piece will explore those two questions by comparing the European Union (EU) and the United States …

After Pillar One, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Pillar One is unlikely to succeed for three reasons. First, it requires an MTC to be implemented because Amount A requires overriding Articles 5 (Permanent Establishment, PE), 7 (Business Profits) and 9 (Associated Enterprises) of every tax treaty to abolish the PE and Arm’s Length Principle (ALP) limits enshrined therein. But negotiating an MTC is hard, especially when over 100 countries are involved and there are fundamental disagreements among them.

Second, because Pillar One (despite its October 2021 expansion) is still aimed primarily at taxing the US digital giants (Big Tech), it is hard to envisage it being implemented without …

To Drink Or Not To Drink? Canada’S New Guidelines For Alcohol Consumption, Lauren Cutler

CICLR Online

On January 17, 2023, Canadian health officials from the Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction released new guidelines for alcohol consumption, replacing a previous set from over ten years ago. These guidelines are reflective of “growing evidence, after decades of sometimes conflicting research, that even small amounts of alcohol can have serious health consequences.” In the technical summary, the Centre states that the costs associated with alcohol use in Canada in 2017 were a whopping $16.6 billion. $5.5 billion of that sum was attributable to healthcare costs.

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

Should Canada’S Expansion Of Its Medical Assistance In Dying Program Concern Americans?, Tova Wolkenstein

CICLR Online

After suffering from severe chronic back pain and fearing losing his home, 54-year-old Canadian Amir Farsoud applied to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program (MAID) to alleviate the stresses of his life. Farsoud is just one instance of an individual choosing to die with a physician’s help under the new criteria of MAID. As Canada is America’s “neighbor to the North,” the expansion of physician-assisted suicide there might be a canary in the coal mine as to what will happen in the United States, unless there is an active pushback to stop it.

This post was originally published on the …

Constitutional Equality And Executive Action: A Comparative Perspective To The Comparator Problem, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A general right to equality is a common feature of written constitutions around the world. Interesting questions arise when one seeks to apply such rights to discrete executive acts. The subject of such acts has necessarily been singled out from a multitude of possibilities for the purposes of the act. To determine whether a differentiation has occurred such that like cases have not been treated alike, to what or whom should this subject be compared? The question of how one selects the proper comparator becomes especially significant when one notes that whether the equal protection guarantee is triggered at all …

From The Editors In Chief, Kathleen Claussen, Sergio Puig, Michael Waibel

Articles

No abstract provided.

Arbitration: Who Does It Better?, Emma Pearson

CICLR Online

Arbitration is a form of dispute resolution used as an alternative to litigation. It has become an increasingly common method of dispute resolution in the United States, with over 9,000 cases and 15 billion dollars going to arbitration in 2021. Arbitration is seen as a beneficial alternative to litigation in the United States for a number of reasons. It takes much less time than traditional litigation so parties can expect to have a resolution to their claim much faster. Additionally, it can be much more cost effective than litigation because it does not have the same extensive discovery process as …

Turkmenistan's Ban On Beauty Services, Samantha Lauring

CICLR Online

In an act that further restricts the rights of women in Turkmenistan, the Turkmen government has imposed a ban on beauty services and limitations on what women can wear. The ban prohibits women from receiving beauty services from salons, including eyelash and nail extensions, tattoos, injections, and hair bleaching. “Sexy” outfits, tight-fitting clothes, and Western-inspired garments are also prohibited under this new mandate.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on February 27, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.

Artificial Vs. Non-Artificial Intelligence: What Does Chatgpt Mean For Labor And Employment?, Ahren Lahvis

CICLR Online

ChatGPT has set the world ablaze. The publicly available and free-to-use chatbot is an application programming interface (API) that generates responses to language requests through artificial intelligence (AI), and processes millions of such requests per day. Released for public access in November 2022, ChatGPT can, upon request, produce jokes, TV episodes, music, and computer code. Students now use it to write papers, businesses use it to create promotional materials, and lawyers use it to draft legal briefs.

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

Lost In The Woods, Moshe Gelberman

CICLR Online

In November of 2022, five U.S. Senators sent letters to top law firms warning them that continued cooperation in environmental-social-governance (ESG) agreements, by the firms or by their clients, would be subject to heightened scrutiny under U.S. antitrust laws. By failing to issue similar antitrust guidelines for ESG agreements, federal policy lags behind the international community, disservices the competitive market, and hurts ESG goals.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on February 6, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.

Repeal Of The Recja And Transfer Of Countries To The Refja, Adeline Chong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore’s Reciprocal Enforcement of Commonwealth Judgments Act 1921 (‘RECJA’) is based on the UK Administration of Justice Act 1920 and its Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act 1959 (‘REFJA’) is based on the UK Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1933. In 2019, the government amended the REFJA in significant ways (previously detailed here), expanding its scope to include the registration of judgments from non-superior courts of gazetted countries, judicial settlements, non-money judgments and interlocutory judgments. At the same time, the RECJA was repealed from a date to be determined by the government.

Politics And Policy Of The Falling Birth Rate In Italy: Predictions And Concerns, Erin Lindsay

CICLR Online

The birth rate in Italy had been a topic of concern for the past couple decades, making it a source of conversation and debate among political parties and candidates in Italy. With the election of a new Italian government and the prediction of Giorgia Meloni being Italy’s new prime minister, how Meloni and her party have spoken of and plan to tackle the falling birth rate is a discussion occurring around the world. The falling birth rate was concerning to country leaders prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but statistics show that the Italian birth rate has fallen …

Free Speech: A Right In Crisis As Turkish Parliament Passes New “Disinformation” Bill, Zaira A. Rojas Navarro

CICLR Online

Shards of glass and plastic flew across the floor as legislator Burak Erbay, a member of the Republican People’s Party, hammered and smashed a smartphone Wednesday night while addressing the Turkish parliament in opposition to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proposed Disinformation Bill. Erbay argued the Bill’s clampdown on social media would make smartphones obsolete. Turkish authorities reported to the Venice Commission and the Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law (DGI) of the Council of Europe that the principal goal of the new legislation is to “prevent the spread of fake, untrue, baseless, and false information designed to …

Place-Based Versus Practice-Based Norms For American Lawyers: "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

This Article acknowledges the growing trend toward practice-based lawyer norms, points out how it allows interaction between the existing place-based norms and the new practice-based norms, and compares this movement with the existing regulatory conditions outside the US. If there is movement from the world as we know it (place-based norms) to a world as it may come to be (practice-based norms), is the change tragic, inevitable, risky, in line with the rest of the global legal profession, or all of the above and more? Specifically, how would such an evolution affect the core duty of lawyer-client confidentiality?

Pandemic As Transboundary Harm: Lessons From The Trail Smelter Arbitration, Russell A. Miller

Scholarly Articles

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused incalculable harm around the world. The fact that this immense harm can be traced back to a localized outbreak in or near Wuhan, China, raises questions about the responsibility China might bear for the pandemic under public international law. Famously applied in the seminal Trail Smelter Arbitration (1938/1941), the Transboundary Harm Principle provides that no state can use or allow the use of its territory in a manner that causes significant harm in the territory of other states. This article does not intend to tap into the unseemly, xenophobic spirit that animates much of the …

Offshore Entanglements, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

For decades, scholars have struggled to determine how to deploy laws and legal institutions to spur economic prosperity. But, without knowing which legal rules and institutions to prioritize for a particular social context, the outcomes have been generally unsatisfactory. The case of offshore financial centers provides fresh and compelling new insights into this puzzle. This Article uses the sociological concept of community economic identity (“CEI”) to understand why some offshore financial centers prioritize investments in legal institutions that bolster their offshore finance enterprises while others do not. CEI refers to a community’s shared identity that is linked to a specific …

Rethinking 'What Counts' As Accountability, Jonathan Fox

Perspectives

The current accountability impasse suggests it may be time to rethink core concepts, as well as the field’s underlying theories of change. The idea of accountability is malleable, ambiguous — and contested. This fuzziness poses challenges for both theory and practice – how do we know what strategies bolster accountability – or whether accountability produces its expected effects? This think piece recognizes the challenge of defining ‘what counts’ as accountability, unpacks a longstanding theory of change - that sunshine is the best disinfectant - and considers some information-based reform initiatives to identify missing links in the causal chain between transparency …

Privacy And National Politics: Fingerprint And Dna Litigation In Japan And The United States Compared, Dongsheng Zang

Articles

Drawing cases from two related areas of law-fingerprint and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) data-this Article proposes a modified framework, built on the Balkin-Levinson emphasis on national politics: First, national politics understood as partisan rivalry cannot account for what I call doctrinal lock-in in this Article, where I will demonstrate that in different stages of American politics-the Lochner era, the New Deal era, and Civil Rights era-courts across the nation ruled predominantly in favor of public data collectors-state and federal law enforcement in fingerprint cases. From the 1990s, when DNA data became hot targets of law enforcement, the United States Supreme Court …

Manufacturing Innovation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

Using intellectual property assets as the proxy for innovation measures, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal and policy strategies that form the foundation for China's new role as the global manufacturer of innovation. Manufacturing innovation is evident through China's multi-prong approach regarding intellectual property production and maximization. Significantly, among many other policies that target innovation, China encourages the production of innovation by accepting patents and trademarks as collateral assets for financing. Entrepreneurs can quickly obtain loans against their portfolios of patents and trademarks. China also requires enterprises seeking to undergo an initial public offering (IPO) on the …

Characterisation And Choice Of Law For Knowing Receipt, Adeline Chong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Knowing receipt requires the satisfaction of disparate elements under English domestic law. Its characterisation under domestic law is also unsettled. These in turn affect the issues of characterisation and choice of law at the private international law level as knowing receipt sits at the intersection of the laws of equity, restitution, wrongs and property. This paper argues that under the common law, knowing receipt ought to be considered as sui generis for choice of law purposes and governed by the law of closest connection to the claim. Where the Rome II Regulation applies, knowing receipt fits better within the tort …

Reflections On The Role Of The Panel, Charles Di Leva

Perspectives

Over the past thirty years, the World Bank and the Inspection Panel have had a supportive relationship regarding the principle of accountability, particularly as applied to the field of development finance operations and the role and responsibility of the Bank as a multilateral public sector financial institution. This relationship has been apparent in at least three key aspects: i) following the Bank’s lead, many development institutions around the globe have taken steps to improve their own accountability and developed independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) modeled on the Inspection Panel; ii) the Bank and other development institutions have been supporting the development …

Can Mediation Provide Remedy For Human Rights Violations? A Quest For Justice Using A Development Bank Accountability Mechanism, Natalie Bugalski, David Pred

Perspectives

This essay describes what it takes—the enormous tenacity, solidarity, courage and skill required—for communities and their civil society partners to seek recourse through the dispute resolution processes of development bank accountability mechanisms. While these mechanisms can be the crucial centerpiece of an effective strategy, their critical shortcomings mean that community advocates must often engage in Olympian advocacy gymnastics to achieve even a small measure of redress. The essay makes recommendations for strengthening community-centered accountability in development finance, so that remediation and prevention of harm become the norm, and not the rare exception.

The World Bank, The Inspection Panel & Immunity, Joe Athialy

Perspectives

The establishment of the Inspection Panel marked a turning point for the World Bank, at a time when the notion of accountability in international financial institutions was still nascent. Triggered by people's movements, this bold experiment aimed at transparency faced hurdles as the Bank was immune to legal consequences, and over a while, it weakened the Panel's mandate. The 2019 US Supreme Court decision stripping the Bank of absolute immunity reshapes its accountability landscape. Post-immunity, the Panel gains renewed significance, scrutinizing and recommending actions. Legal repercussions for non-compliance bring a paradigm shift, compelling the Bank to enhance transparency, engage communities, …

"Use And Improve" Is My Accountability Mantra, Despite 30 Years Of Eye-Opening Disappointments, Natalie Bridgeman Fields

Perspectives

This essay finds justification for championing the continued existence, functioning and evolution of Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs). An inside assessment of the thirty-year functioning of IAMs reveals that inadequate power and independence are severely hampering IAM efforts to hold actors accountable for harm. Simultaneously, IAMs can’t make progress without the underlying financial institutions reforming their incentive structures to reward harm prevention and remedy. Despite decades of systemic failure to deliver accountability, when exceptions happen, they are worth it and can be spectacular. With an influx of new climate-related funding expected at the financial institutions, exceptions need to become the rule. …

The Critical Contribution Of Independent Accountability Mechanisms (Iams) To The Global Governance Paradigm, Owen Mcintyre

Perspectives

For several decades now, the environmental and social safeguard policies adopted by international financial institutions (IFIs), along with the related accountability frameworks provided by the independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) established by each, have been at the very forefront of a global movement to extend good environmental and social governance values to the practice of international development finance. The complex of substantive and procedural standards of institutional conduct required under multilateral development bank (MDB) safeguard policies in respect of the assessment and implementation of bank-funded development projects or activities exemplifies the phenomenon of so-called “transnational” or “global” law - the rich …

An Increased Normalization Of Iams Faces Ground Realities: Lack Of Transparency Impedes Access To Iams, Hamid Sharif

Perspectives

The creation of the Inspection Panel at the World Bank has led to the emergence of a norm that international financial institutions (IFIs) must hold themselves accountable to project-affected people through independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs). AIIB as a 21^st century bank reflects this normalization of IAMs. As a new MDB, AIIB’s charter mandates creation of an oversight body that includes the independent accountability mechanism or the Project-affected People’s mechanism (PPM). The PPM is aligned with many features of IFI’s IAMs while incorporating some innovations.

The central question asked by civil society and board members across IFIs is why there …