Law Commons^™

Briefing Note: 45th Meeting Of The Wipo Standing Committee On Copyright And Related Rights, Sean Flynn

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This analysis provides a historical and legal overview of the principle agenda items to be discussed at the 45th meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.

Law School News: Sanctions On Russia: Imperfect But Necessary 03-02-2022, Gregory W. Bowman

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: The Line Between Talent And Desire, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Infringement, Unbound, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hollow Spaces, Charles H. Brower Ii

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Extraterritorial Criminal Jurisdiction Under The Antitrust Laws, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The Ninth Circuit may soon consider whether challenges to antitrust activity that occurs abroad must invariably be addressed under the rule of reason, which will make criminal prosecution difficult or impossible.

When antitrust cases involve foreign conduct, the courts customarily appraise its substantive antitrust significance only after deciding whether the Sherman Act reaches the activity. Nevertheless, "jurisdictional" and "substantive" inquiries are not wholly independent. Both reflect two sound propositions: that Congress did not intend American antitrust law to rule the entire commercial world and that Congress knew that domestic economic circumstances often differ from those abroad where mechanical application of …

Dissent As Dialectic: Horizontal And Vertical Disagreement In Wto Dispute Settlement, Meredith Kolsky Lewis

Journal Articles

This article examines the phenomena of dissent within WTO dispute settlement panels and within Appellate Body divisions ("horizontal disagreement") and the failure of certain WTO dispute settlement panels to follow previous rulings of the Appellate Body ("vertical disagreement"). With respect to horizontal disagreement, the article responds to a recent critique of my earlier piece on the subject (The Lack of Dissent in WTO Dispute Settlement, 9 J. INT’L ECON. L. 895 (2006)). With respect to vertical disagreement, the article examines whether there are textual or normative reasons why panels should not disagree with the Appellate Body. It argues that the …

Penalty Clauses And The Cisg, Jack Graves

Scholarly Works

Commercial agreements often provide for “fixed sums” payable upon a specified breach. Such agreements are generally enforced in civil law jurisdictions. In contrast, the common law distinguishes between “liquidated damages” and “penalty” clauses, enforcing the former, while invalidating the latter as a penalty. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) does not directly address the payment of “fixed sums” as damages, and the validity of “penalty” clauses has, traditionally, been relegated to otherwise applicable domestic national law under CISG Article 4. This traditional orthodoxy has recently been challenged—suggesting that the fate of a penalty clause …

Penalty Clauses And The Cisg, Jack Graves

Scholarly Works

Commercial agreements often provide for “fixed sums” payable upon a specified breach. Such agreements are generally enforced in civil law jurisdictions. In contrast, the common law distinguishes between “liquidated damages” and “penalty” clauses, enforcing the former, while invalidating the latter as a penalty. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) does not directly address the payment of “fixed sums” as damages, and the validity of “penalty” clauses has, traditionally, been relegated to otherwise applicable domestic national law under CISG Article 4. This traditional orthodoxy has recently been challenged—suggesting that the fate of a penalty clause …

Arbitration And Antitrust: Navigating The Contours Of Mandatory Law, Charles H. Brower Ii

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Obama's First Trade War: The Us-Mexico Cross-Border Trucking Dispute And The Implications Of Strategic Cross-Sector Retaliation On U.S. Compliance Under Nafta, Bryan J. Soukup

Law Student Publications

Mexico's recent decision to employ strategic cross-sector retaliation against the US in response to the US suspension of the 2007 Cross-Border Trucking Development pilot program is a significant development in NAFTA relations. Never before has a NAFTA member imposed sanctions in this way to pressure a fellow member to comply with its NAFTA obligations. To date, this remedy has been utilized only in two WTO cases. In both these asymmetric disputes, the larger stat either withdrew the offending trade measure or modified its commitments to avoid the political fallout of targeted sanctions back home in unrelated industry sectors. The WTO's …

"Arbitration As A Final Award: Challenges And Enforcement" Published As Chapter 10 In International Sales Law And Arbitration: Problems, Cases, And Commentary, Jack M. Graves, Joseph F. Morrissey

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Does International Arbitration Need A Mandatory Rules Method?, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The role of mandatory rules in international arbitration remains a persistent source of debate. The basic problem is a straightforward one: contractual arbitration arises as a matter of the parties’ consent, but the resolution of contractual disputes can implicate mandatory rules of law that are not waivable and are typically designed to protect broader public rights. The literature has often presented the issue in terms of conflict between the authority of the state and the party-derived authority of the arbitrator. Asserting an independent public duty to protect national mandatory laws as well as the enforceability of arbitral awards, some writers …

Transparency In International Commercial Arbitration, Catherine A. Rogers

Journal Articles

Scholars have long been making the case for expanding transparency in the international commercial arbitration system, but recently these proposals have taken on a greater sense of urgency and an apparent willingness to forcibly impose transparency reforms on unwilling parties. These new transparency advocates exhort the general public's stakehold in many issues being arbitrated, which they contend necessitates transparency reforms, including compulsory publication of international commercial arbitration awards.

In this symposium essay, I begin by developing a definition of transparency in the adjucatory setting, and conceptually distinguishing from other concepts, like "public access" and "disclosure," which are often improperly treated …

The Sutherland Report And Dispute Settlement, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

Ten years after the organization's founding, an air of disappointment surrounds the WTO. The great promise of a global trade regime, dedicated to the principle of comparative advantage, seems to have stalled. The Doha Development Round, launched in 2001 in an attempt to redeem the disastrous Seattle Ministerial Conference of 1999, has been stymied by familiar disputes between North and South, mostly with respect to agricultural issues, but with respect to nonagricultural market access and services as well. Frustrated by impasses at the WTO, members have increasingly bypassed the organization in favor of discrete "preferential trade agreements", or PTAs, that …

Between Dialogue And Decree: International Review Of National Courts, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have seen dramatic growth in the number of international tribunals at work across the globe, from the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, to the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Claims in Switzerland and the International Criminal Court. With this development has come both increased opportunity for interaction between national and international courts and increased occasion for conflict. Such friction was evident in the recent decision in Loewen Group, Inc. v. United States, in which an arbitral panel constituted under the North American Free Trade Agreement found …

International Franchising: Focus On Central And Eastern Europe And Russia, Aksinia Zaharieva Dintcheva

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis discusses and analyzes international franchising and its introduction and development in the emerging democracies in Eastern Europe. After a general presentation of the franchise marketing method, the advantages and disadvantages to both parties of the franchise relationship are discussed. Attention is given to the alternatives available to foreign franchisors contemplating international franchising in the Eastern European region. The thesis further reviews the newly enacted foreign investment laws in six Eastern European countries - Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia - as they relate to the joint venture operations in the region and the attending legal issues. …

International Joint Ventures Between France And The United States, Alexis Desreumaux

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis focuses on two markets: France and the United States. Although these markets are competitive in several areas, sometimes some cooperation is needed in order to achieve a successful venture. The focus of this thesis is on two major issues. First, how can an American company, with a French partner, venture in France? And, second, how can a French company "invade" the U.S. market, with the help of a local company? To narrow the focus of this thesis, these " multipartite" joint ventures are to be dealt with. The thesis concerns the joint ventures made from two corporations, one …

Protection Of Intellectual Property Rights And The Impact Of Trips, Sowmiya R.K. Sikal

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis focuses on the importance of intellectual property rights and its protection in the international arena. Coming from a developing country - India, I have always been fascinated with the area of international intellectual property rights protection because of its severe ramification on the economy and the social structure of developing countries. The impact of heightened protection of intellectual property rights has been a controversial issue between developed and developing countries for many years. In this paper, I have examined intellectual property rights, need for its protection, conventions, treaties and agreements present for the protection of intellectual property including …

International Cooperative Enforcement Agreements And Antitrust Extraterritoriality In The 21st Century, Basil Dominic Udotai

LLM Theses and Essays

It is the focus of this thesis to critically evaluate the cooperative enforcement option proffered by the US authorities with a view to judging its attractiveness to other nations and its adequacy in solving problems posed by extraterritoriality in today's highly liberalized economy. In this regard, we shall see that the various models of cooperative enforcement arrangements adopted within the United States have failed to result in productive bilateral cooperation. This is due in large part, to the commitment of individual countries to satisfying national interests over cooperative obligations arising under the agreements. Because of these insufficiencies, the thesis reiterates …

The Wto Legal System: Sources Of Law, David Palmeter, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Modern discussions of the sources of international law usually begin with a reference to Article 38 (1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which provides:

The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply:

1. international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states;
2. international custom as evidence of a general practice accepted as law;
3. the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations;
4. subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly …

Using Trade To Enforce International Environmental Law: Implications For United States Law, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

The United States has enviable domestic environmental protection laws. However, good domestic environmental protection raises two concerns: effectiveness and competitiveness. In response to these two problems of environmental protection—effectiveness and competitiveness—members of Congress introduced over thirty bills in 1990 to amend U.S. trade laws. The bills were designed to either press other states to adopt environmental protection standards similar to the United States own or to at least minimize the competitive disadvantage for U.S. business inherent in U.S. regulations. The bills took one of two approaches: either they aimed at restricting access to U.S. markets for those states failing to …