Law Commons^™

Tax In The World Of Antitrust Enforcement: European Commission’S State Aid Investigations Into Eu Member States’ Tax Rulings, Nina Hrushko

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In August 2016, after a two-year investigation, the European Commission issued a negative State aid ruling against Ireland, finding that the country had provided illegal tax benefits to Apple Inc. and requesting the government to collect €13 billion in retroactive taxes from the company. This decision sparked a heated debate around the globe about the European Commission’s authority to interfere into the individual EU Member States’ fiscal policies and order retroactive tax recoveries. This Note explores the application of EU State aid rules to tax laws and, in particular, EU Member States’ tax rulings, and discusses the European Commission’s investigations …

The Scrivener’S Secrets Seen Through The Spyglass: Gchq And The International Right To Journalistic Expression, Matthew B. Hurowitz

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

As part of the U.K.’s electronic surveillance program, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), started in 1909 to combat German Spies, now collects metadata from both foreigners and its own citizens. Through the express statutory authority of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 (RIPA), and a loophole in section 94 of the Telecommunications Act of 1984, the GCHQ collects metadata, which is all of the information that is extrinsic to the actual contents of a communication. The GCHQ can request an authorization from a public authority—a member of its own staff—to collect traffic data, service use information, or subscriber …

Unilateral Jurisdiction To Provide Global Public Goods: A Republican Account, Aravind Ganesh

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Failures of international cooperation with regard to protecting the environment, regulating cross-border competition, and preventing terrorism have sometimes lead states to enact unilateral measures with extraterritorial effect. A common trend among international legal scholars defending these measures is to employ the concept of ‘global public goods,’ understood as desirable, utility-advancing things that tend, for various reasons, to be undersupplied by states acting separately. On this view, unilateral measures are justified on grounds that they address ‘harms’ to ‘interests’ that cannot be contained within individual states, or because they advance supposedly universal ‘values.’ Drawing from the ‘republican’ legal and political philosophy …

Looking Backward, Moving Forward: What Must Be Remembered When Resolving The Right To Be Forgotten, Katherine Stewart

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In May 2014, the European Court of Justice decided Google Spain v. AEPD and González and granted citizens the right to be forgotten, rather, the right to request any search engine offering services to European consumers to remove certain results displayed after a search of a citizen’s name. This decision has also resulted in an ongoing battle between Google and the Commission Nationale de l’Infomatique et des Libertés (CNIL), France’s data protection authority. The CNIL believes that Google must apply the right to be forgotten to all domains worldwide, including Google.com. Google, however, has been reluctant to do so, given …

Taking Constitutional Identities Away From The Courts, Pietro Faraguna

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In federal states, constitutional identity is the glue that holds together the Union. On the contrary, in the European Union—not a fully-fledged federation yet—each Member state has its own constitutional identity. On the one hand, the Union may benefit from the particular knowledge, innovation, history, diversity, and culture of its individual states. On the other hand, identity-related claims may have a disintegrating effect. Constitutional diversity needs to come to terms with risks of disintegration. The Treaty on the European Union seeks a balance, providing the obligation to respect the constitutional identities of its Member states. Drawing from the European experience, …

Fashion Forward: The Need For A Proactive Approach To The Counterfeit Epidemic, Casey Tripoli

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In the last two decades, the overall activity of the counterfeit market has expanded and risen 10,000 percent. This dramatic shift corresponds to growth of the Internet, which has unified the fascination of obtaining cheap, illegitimate goods with the efficiency of a mouse click. With the expected continued inflation of the counterfeit market comes a host of new concerns, namely, how to determine who is responsible for the distribution of these knockoffs, and who should be ordained to limit them in the marketplace. In both the United States and the European Union, however, outdated laws produce a mélange of inadequate …

A Golden Opportunity: Supporting Up-And-Coming U.S. Luxury Designers Through Design Legislation, Shieva Salehnia

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This Note examines the necessity of creating clothing design protection legislation in the United States as a catalyst for up-and-coming designers to compete with European Union luxury conglomerates in reaching the new, emerging middle class in mainland China. It first discusses the current international intellectual property regimes pertinent to creative expression and brand ownership in the context of the fashion industry and clothing design. It looks at how international agreements may provide general harmonization strategies for trademark protection but leave up-and-coming brands and designers out of its framework. It also provides a brief overview of the persistence and prevalence of …

The Costs And Consequences Of Incorrect Citations: European Law In The U.S. Supreme Court, Andrea Pin

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Building on the controversy over foreign citations in domestic courts, this article reflects on the U.S. Supreme Court's practice of quoting EU law and the European Court of Human Rights’ case law. It offers a detailed examination of how the U.S. Supreme Court has used European sources and shifts the debate over whether it should use them, by explaining a different way in which the court could exploit them. The article focuses on the three fields in which such foreign case law has either influenced the U.S. Supreme Court decisions or otherwise impacted the judges’ reasoning: laws targeting homosexual conduct; …

“Chi S’Aiuta, Dio L’Aiuta”: Balancing Italy’S Right To Utilize Assisted Reproductive Technologies With The Teachings Of The Catholic Church, Erin A. Mcmullan

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Adelina Parrillo never anticipated starting a prolonged legal battle when she requested her embryos be donated for scientific research. The restrictive legislation in place in Italy, inevitably influenced by the Catholic Church, mandated that she either implant the embryos or store them indefinitely. After a long drawn out battle with the Italian courts, she desperately sought assistance from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), a court tasked with protecting the rights of individuals such as Parrillo from the overreaching of Member States. The ECtHR) acknowledged that this decision, to donate her unused embryos to medical research, was within the …

The Need For An International Convention On Data Privacy: Taking A Cue From The Cisg, Morgan Corley

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In light of the invalidation of the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor, along with the increase in sales of personal data as a commodity, data privacy has become a major concern amongst different nations. The lack of harmonization of data-privacy laws around the world continues to pose obstacles to the free flow of data across national borders. The free flow of data is, nonetheless, essential the international economy. As a result, nations continue to work together to try to create mechanisms by which data can be transferred across borders in a secure manner. This Note examines the current state of data-privacy law …

Unilateral Non-Colonial Secession And The Criteria For Statehood In International Law, Glen Anderson

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The following article examines the interactions between the right of peoples to unilateral non-colonial (“UNC”) secession and the criteria for statehood in international law. In this respect a three-point thesis is developed. First, it is argued that the law of self-determination has resulted in a less strict application of the criteria for statehood based on effectiveness, particularly the effective government criterion. This means that a state created by UNC secession pursuant to the law of self-determination will not have its statehood called into question if lacks an effective government. Second, it is argued that the declaratory approach to recognition is …

Reservations And The Cisg: The Borderland Of Uniform International Sales Law And Treaty Law After Thirty-Five Years, Ulrich G. Schroeter

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

The Problem With Frand: How The Licensing Commitments Of Standard-Setting Organizations Result In The Misvaluing Of Patents, David Arsego

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Standard-setting organizations (SSOs) are bodies that oversee the development of technical standards. Technical standards are common technological designs that are used across a variety of platforms, for instance LTE, which is utilized throughout the mobile phone industry. Members of SSOs contribute different pieces of technology to an ultimate design, and if a patent covers the technology, it is called a standard-essential patent (SEP). SSOs require their members to license these patents to each other on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms. This Note analyzes the FRAND requirement and the different ways that courts and private parties interpret it. The ambiguity …

The Scottish Independence Referendum And The Principles Of Democratic Secession, Benjamin Levites

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

On September 18, 2014, Scottish voters decided whether to sever the 307 years of unity between Scotland and the United Kingdom in an independence referendum. While the voters ultimately rejected independence, the process by which the Scots accomplished this historic exercise will inform further democratic secession movements.

This Note examines the significant implications of Scotland’s independence referendum by assessing the history of independence referendums and the present scope of relevant international law. The formative history of the independence referendum and modern precedential examples established the requirements for democratic secession. In turn, the Scottish independence referendum, in the context of evolving …

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite: The United Nations Declaration Of The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples Fails To Protect Hopi Katsinam From The Auction Block In France, Samantha K. Nikic

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) compels member states to take action in order to protect the rights of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples, including the right to their cultural property. Notwithstanding the UNDRIP’s robust set of protections, its status as a nonbinding piece of international law remains its ultimate and most fatal flaw. France was an enthusiastic supporter of the UNDRIP at ratification, but has effectively abandoned their position. French auction houses and courts have allowed for sales of Native American sacred property to proceed despite the objections of the Hopi Tribe. In …