Law | Open Access Articles | Digital Commons Network™

The Domestic Origins Of International Agreements, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines how international agreements are substitutes for statutes. The statutory law-making system and international agreement negotiations are separate, but sometimes rival, processes for setting national-level policy. International agreements have several advantages over domestic statutes. Under United States law, international agreements can entrench policies that might otherwise be subject to change; they can transfer agenda-setting power from the Congress to the President; and they can delegate authority to international organizations. Each of these effects can lead domestic interest groups to seek international negotiations rather than domestic legislation. Little difference exists between the politics of international and domestic law: Interest …

Go to article

Sovereign Debt Reform And The Best Interest Of Creditors, William W. Bratton, G. Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

In April 2002 the International Monetary Fund introduced a sovereign bankruptcy proposal only to be rebuffed by the United States Treasury. Where the IMF wanted a mandatory bankruptcy regime, the Treasury wanted to solve distress problems with contractual devices. Sovereign bondholders and sovereign issuers themselves flatly rejected both proposals, even though they were nominally the beneficiaries of both proponents. This Article addresses and explains this bondholder reaction. In so doing, it takes a highly skeptical view of the IMF's proposal even as it shows that the incentive structure surrounding sovereign lending renders untenable the Treasury's contractarian proposal. The Article's analysis …

Go to article