Law Commons^™

Soft Law And The Principle Of Fair And Equitable Decisionmaking In International Contract Arbitration, Larry Dimatteo

Larry A DiMatteo

This article provides a survey of the special relationship between international commercial arbitration and soft law instruments. It briefly traces the historical roots of the lex mercatoria to its present enunciation in the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. It discusses the characteristic of the hardness and softness of laws in an international commercial law context. The CISG is studied not only as a hard law, but also as an example of soft law. The affinity between soft law and international commercial arbitration is explored, as well as …

A Failure To Consider: Why Lawmakers Create Risk By Ignoring Trade Obligations, David R. Kocan Professor

David R. Kocan Professor

The U.S. Congress frequently passes laws facially unrelated to trade that significantly impact U.S. trade relations. These impacts are often harmful, significant, and long-lasting. Despite this fact, these bills rarely receive adequate consideration of how they will impact trade. Without this consideration, Congress cannot properly conduct a cost-benefit analysis necessary to pass effective laws. To remedy this problem, the U.S. Trade Representative should evaluate U.S. domestic law to determine whether it is consistent with international trade obligations. Moreover, the U.S. Congress committee structure should be amended so that laws that might impact trade are considered within that light. In the …

Rise Of The Intercontinentalexchange And Implications Of Its Merger With Nyse Euronext, Latoya C. Brown

Latoya C. Brown, Esq.

This paper examines the impending merger between the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) and NYSE Euronext against the backdrop of the current structure of the global financial services industry. The paper concludes that the merger embodies what the financial services industry is becoming and captures the model that will allow exchanges to remain competitive in today’s marketplace: mega-exchanges with broader asset classes and electronic platforms. As technology and globalization threaten their vitality, exchanges will need to continue reinventing and adapting. Increasingly over the last decade they have done so by merging and by moving, at least a part of, their operations on screen. …

The Political Feasibility Of A Global E-Commerce Tax, Rifat Azam Dr.

Rifat Azam Dr.

In its strongest statement yet on progressive tax reform, the UN has recently called on countries to introduce a global carbon tax and financial transaction tax (FTT). In my recent article entitled Global Taxation of Cross Border E-commerce Income (31 Virginia Tax Review 639 (Spring 2012)), I proposed to impose a global e-commerce tax on cross border e-commerce income by a new supranational institution, The Global Tax Fund, to be established by countries through international treaty. According to my proposal, the global e-commerce tax revenues shall be spent to fund global public goods. I argued normatively that the proposed regime …

Ending Judgment Arbitrage: Jurisdictional Competition And The Enforcement Of Foreign Money Judgments In The United States, Gregory Shill

Gregory Shill

Recent multi-billion-dollar damage awards issued by foreign courts against large American companies have focused attention on the once-obscure, patchwork system of enforcing foreign-country judgments in the United States. That system’s structural problems are even more serious than its critics have charged. However, the leading proposals for reform overlook the positive potential embedded in its design.

In the United States, no treaty or federal law controls the domestication of foreign judgments; the process is instead governed by state law. Although they are often conflated in practice, the procedure consists of two formally and conceptually distinct stages: foreign judgments must first be …