Law Commons^™

Catch And Kill Jurisdiction, Zachary D. Clopton

Michigan Law Review

In catch and kill journalism, a tabloid buys a story that could be published elsewhere and then deliberately declines to publish it. In catch and kill jurisdiction, a federal court assumes jurisdiction over a case that could be litigated in state court and then declines to hear the merits through a nonmerits dismissal. Catch and kill journalism undermines the free flow of information. Catch and kill jurisdiction undermines the enforcement of substantive rights. And, importantly, because catch and kill jurisdiction relies on jurisdictional and procedural law, it is often able to achieve ends that would be politically unpalatable by other …

Confessions In An International Age: Re-Examining Admissibility Through The Lens Of Foreign Interrogations, Julie Tanaka Siegel

Michigan Law Review

In Colorado v. Connelly the Supreme Court held that police misconduct is necessary for an inadmissible confession. Since the Connelly decision, courts and scholars have framed the admissibility of a confession in terms of whether it successfully deters future police misconduct. As a result, the admissibility of a confession turns largely on whether U.S. police acted poorly, and only after overcoming this threshold have courts considered factors pointing to the reliability and voluntariness of the confession. In the international context, this translates into the routine and almost mechanic admission of confessions— even when there is clear indication that the confession …

Toward Greater Guidance: Reforming The Definitions Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Matthew W. Muma

Michigan Law Review

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 is the cornerstone of the United States’ efforts to combat the involvement of U.S. companies and individuals in corruption abroad. Enforced by both the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the Act targets companies and individuals that pay bribes to “foreign officials,” a nebulous category of persons that includes everyone from foreign cabinet members to janitors at companies only partially owned by a foreign state. After only sporadic enforcement in the early years of the Act’s existence, the SEC and DOJ now bring many cases annually. This increased …

The Basel Iii Liquidity Coverage Ratio And Financial Stability, Andrew W. Hartlage

Michigan Law Review

Banks and other financial institutions may increase the amount of credit available in the financial system by borrowing for short terms and lending for long terms. Though this "maturity transformation" is a useful and productive function of banks, it gives rise to the possibility that even prudently managed banks could fail due to a lack of liquid assets. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 revealed the extent to which the U.S. financial system is exposed to the risk of a system-wide failure from insufficient liquidity. Financial regulators from economies around the world have responded to the crisis by proposing new, internationally …

Climate Justice, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

Eric Posner and David Weisbach take the threat of climate change seriously. Their book Climate Change Justice offers policy prescriptions that deserve serious attention. While the authors adopt the framework of conventional welfare economics, they show a willingness to engage with noneconomic perspectives, which softens their conclusions. Although they are right to see a risk that overly aggressive ethical claims could derail international agreement on restricting greenhouse gases, their analysis makes climate justice too marginal to climate policy. The developed world does have a special responsibility for the current climate problem, and we should be willing both to agree to …

Zoya's Standing Problem, Or, When Should The Constitution Follow The Flag?, Jeffrey Kahn

Michigan Law Review

Some federal courts have devised a new test of prudential standing that they use to dismiss suits filed by foreign plaintiffs alleging unlawful conduct by American officials abroad, even when these cases involve matters that may have nothing to do with foreign affairs, national security, or terrorism. Rather than decide the case on its merits or dismiss it on any number of legitimate grounds, the complaint is dismissed because the plaintiff lacks a "prior substantial connection" to the United States. I identify and critique this strange but proliferating test of standing. First, it is inconsistent with any theoretical view of …

The Citizenship Paradox In A Transnational Age, Cristina M. Rodríguez

Michigan Law Review

Through Americans in Waiting, Hiroshi Motomura tells us three different stories about how U.S. law and policy, over time, have framed the relationship between immigrants and the American body politic. He captures the complexity, historical contingency, and democratic urgency of that relationship by canvassing the immigration law canon and teasing from it the three frameworks that have structured immigrants' social status, their interactions with the state, and the processes of immigrant integration and naturalization. In so doing, he illuminates how popular mythologies about the assimilative capacity of the American melting pot obscure myriad political and social conflicts over how …

Transnational Networks And International Criminal Justice, Jenia Iontcheva Turner

Michigan Law Review

The theory of transgovernmental networks describes how government officials make law and policy on issues of global concern by coordinating informally across borders, without legal or official sanction. Scholars have argued that this sort of coordination is useful in many different areas of cross-border regulation, including banking, antitrust, environmental protection, and securities law. One area to which the theory has not yet been applied is international criminal law. For a number of reasons, until recently, international criminal law had not generated the same transgovernmental networks that have emerged in other fields. With few exceptions, international criminal law had been enforced …

"I'D Like To Teach The World To Sing (In Perfect Harmony)": International Judicial Dialogue And The Muses - Reflections On The Perils And The Promise Of International Judicial Dialogue, Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Proponents of international judicial dialogue would do well to read, and reflect upon, the conversations chronicled in Judges in Contemporary Democracy. In a lucid and candid series of interlocutions, five preeminent constitutional jurists and one highly regarded constitutional theorist ponder some of the most difficult questions about the role of a judge on a constitutional court. In particular, the participants-including Stephen Breyer (Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States), Robert Badinter (former President of the Constitutional Council of France), Antonio Cassese (former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia), Dieter Grimm (former Justice of …

No Longer Safe At Home: Preventing The Misuse Of Federal Common Law Of Foreign Relations As A Defense Tactic In Private Transnational Litigation, Lumen N. Mulligan

Michigan Law Review

In an increasingly common litigation strategy, plaintiffs in Patrickson v. Dole Food Company, laborers in the banana industries of Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala and Panama, brought a classaction suit in Hawaii state court against Dole Food and other defendants. Plaintiffs brought only state law causes of action, alleging that they had been harmed by Dole Food's use of DBCP, a toxic pesticide banned from use in the United States. Dole Food removed the case to federal district court seeking the procedural advantages of a federal forum, as corporate defendants facing alien tort plaintiffs seeking redress for overseas conduct invariably do. …

International Bankruptcy: In Defense Of Universalism, Andrew T. Guzman

Michigan Law Review

The globalization of business activity is rightfully celebrated as one of the triumphs of the second half of the twentieth century. The benefits stemming from the globalization of commerce are substantial, but international transactions also bring with them important challenges for the world's legal systems. Traditionally, national governments could focus on their domestic economies without undue attention to international issues. Today, however, a country's policymakers must respond to the growth in international business activity with appropriate legal changes. Failure to do so will cause their legal regimes to fall further and further out of step with the needs of the …

The Case For Cooperative Territoriality In International Bankruptcy, Lynn M. Lopucki

Michigan Law Review

Universalism - the idea that a multinational debtor's "home country" should have worldwide jurisdiction over its bankruptcy - has long had tremendous appeal to bankruptcy professionals. Yet, the international community repeatedly has refused to adopt conventions that would make universalism a reality. In an article published last year, I proposed an explanation. Universalism can work only in a world with essentially uniform laws governing bankruptcy �nd priority among creditors - a world that does not yet exist. Because it is impossible to fix the location of a multinational company in a global economy, the introduction of universalism in current world …

Resolving Transnational Insolvencies Through Private Ordering, Robert K. Rasmussen

Michigan Law Review

There is no international bankruptcy law. No question, there are international insolvencies. Transnational firms, just like domestic ones, often cannot generate sufficient revenue to satisfy their debt obligations. Their financial distress creates a situation where assets and claimants are scattered across more than one country. But there is no international law that provides a set of rules for resolving the financial distress of these firms. The absence of any significant free-standing international bankruptcy treaty means that a domestic court confronted with the domestic part of a transnational enterprise has to decide which nation's domestic bankruptcy law will apply to which …

A Global Solution To Multinational Default, Jay Lawrence Westbrook

Michigan Law Review

A new world is slouching toward New York and London, Beijing and Bangkok, to be born. If our planet and our values survive the secondary effects of that emergence, we may look forward to a humanity more prosperous and more integrated than at any time in human history. The force that drives us to that future is free-market capitalism constrained in the vessel of democratic institutions. One important element in its progress is the fashioning of an international system for managing the financial crises that are one of the free market's inevitable consequences. In this symposium, we debate which is …

Exit And Voice In The Age Of Globalization, Eyal Benvenisti

Michigan Law Review

The "globalization" of commerce provides ever-growing opportunities for producers, employers, and service providers to shop the globe for more amenable jurisdictions. While they enjoy a "race to the top," an international "race to the bottom," spawned by decreasing relocation costs, threatens to compromise the achievements of the welfare state and lower standards of consumer protection. National governments, weakened by competition that entails leaner budgets, find it increasingly difficult to cooperate in the appropriation of crucial shared natural resources, seriously endangering these assets while damaging the environment. Not only does the growing global competition create both efficiency losses and social-welfare problems, …

Securities Disclosure In A Globalizing Market: Who Should Regulate Whom, Merritt B. Fox

Michigan Law Review

One of the most dramatic examples of increasing interaction across national boundaries in recent years has been the burgeoning volume of transnational transactions in corporate equities. Most developed capitalist countries impose affirmative obligations on issuers of corporate equity to disclose certain information about themselves. While these obligations are imposed on issuers, they are triggered by transactions. The growth in transnational transactions is thus increasingly raising difficult issues concerning the reach of differing national regimes. Given the magnitude of legal resources devoted to compliance with such disclosure regulations, they promise to feature prominently in the larger discussion of the role of …

Law, Morality, And The Relations Of States, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law, Morality, and the Relations of States by Terry Nardin

Civil Enforcement Of Eec Antitrust Law, Francis G. Jacobs

Michigan Law Review

This paper examines whether and to what extent private civil remedies are, as a matter of law, and ought to be, as a matter of policy, available in the courts of the EEC Member States for breach of the antitrust provisions of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (the Treaty of Rome). These questions are addressed in Part I. Part II sets the issues in the broader context of the enforcement of the Treaty obligations of Member States. In this way, it is hoped to elucidate the relationship between national law and Community law, and also indirectly to illuminate …

The Interrelationship Between United Nations Law And The Law Of Other International Organizations, Richard H. Lauwaars

Michigan Law Review

The question regarding the interrelationship between UN law and the law of other international organizations acquired actual significance in the Netherlands in the spring of 1983. At that time, the Dutch Government published a Note stating that, due to the strictures of international law embodied in the law of the European Economic Community (EEC) and European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the Benelux Economic Union, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), it could not impose unilateral sanctions against South Africa. In response to this Note, a group of public international law professors in the Netherlands issued a …

The Impact Of The Case Law Of The Court Of Justice Of The European Communities On The Economic World Order, Pieter Vanloren Van Themaat

Michigan Law Review

Among Europeans, Eric Stein is generally considered to be the outstanding expert on European Community law in the United States. Now we Europeans flatter ourselves, of course, with the opinion that there are outstanding experts on Community law within Europe as well. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the reason why so many students and scholars from Europe have gone to Ann Arbor for post-graduate studies or research work on European Community law lies mainly in the fact that Eric Stein has always been appreciated as a great scholar in international law and the law of international organizations, as well as an …

Direct And Indirect Judicial Control Of Community Acts In Practice: The Relation Between Articles 173 And 177 Of The Eec Treaty, Gerhard Bebr

Michigan Law Review

The European Economic Community (EEC) Treaty contains two different judicial controls over the exercise of the powers granted to the Community by the Treaty: (1) a direct control through an action in the European Court of Justice under article 173 to annul a Community act; and (2) an indirect control through reference by a national court to the Court of Justice under article 177 to review the validity of a Community act. Each of . these controls is designed to ensure the legal exercise of power by Community institutions. In form, however, they are quite different procedures.

The present study …

Effects Of International Agreements In European Community Law: Are The Dice Cast?, Jacques H.J. Bourgeois

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this contribution is to explore the extent to which the "direct effect" doctrine, developed within the Community legal system for the purpose of the relations between Community law and the Member States' law, has spilled over into the field of the relations between international law and Community law, or, to use a somewhat daring comparison, to what extent the doctrine of McCulloch v. Maryland has been applied in a Foster and Elam situation.

How Flexible Is Community Law? An Unusual Approach To The Concept Of "Two Speeds", Claus-Dieter Ehlermann

Michigan Law Review

The concept of "two speeds" de lege ferenda and the connected question of possible flexibility in Community law de lege lata raise a number of highly complex institutional questions that go to the very roots of the Community system. We offer the following analysis of such questions to Eric Stein, whose writing and teaching have contributed so greatly to the understanding of the Community's foundations.

The Court Of Justice As A Decisionmaking Authority, Ulrich Everling

Michigan Law Review

Eric Stein, to whom this Article is dedicated, has written a number of commentaries on the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice on the basis of his experience with both the European continental law and the common law systems. In conformity with his pragmatic approach, the following examination of the Court of Justice as a decisionmaking authority devotes less attention to the theoretical context than to the manner in which the Court attempts to accomplish its task in practice. This essay is intended to provide a judge's point of view, that is to say, a subjective contribution on the basis …

The European Community And The Requirement Of A Republican Form Of Government, Jochen Abr. Frowein

Michigan Law Review

The European Community - that is, the factual entity composed of three legally separate communities which has been and still is one of the basic concerns of Eric Stein - cannot be understood without taking into account European history after 1933. As an irony of history, the stage for a new beginning was set by the man who destroyed the old Europe and who was the reason that so many academics left the "old country" for the new world. This new start was not only influenced by the determination of those Europeans who had lived through the darkness to overcome …

The Case For Federalizing Rules Of Civil Jurisdiction In The European Community, Peter Hay

Michigan Law Review

The European Community is an "incipient federal structure," even if its scope of operation is limited in subject matter and its creation derives from "a network of treaties rather than [from] a formal constitution." A federal structure at once protects, even nurtures, pluralism and coordinates the constituent units in the interest of a union. Federal legislation promotes the interests of the larger unit; a limitation of powers in the constitutive document preserves the integrity of the members. In the American federation, the United States Supreme Court defines the balance between the reach of state and federal law. The balance, moreover, …

The Applicability Of The Ecsc-Cartel Prohibition (Article 65) During A "Manifest Crisis", Ernst-Joachim Mestmäcker

Michigan Law Review

The Commission and the Council have found that the steel industry of the Community is facing a "manifest crisis" within the meaning of article 58 of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) Treaty. Factors that have led to this crisis include structural peculiarities of the steel industry, an increase in production costs, a decrease in demand for steel and steel products, and the resulting excess capacity in steel mills. A majority of the Member States have attempted to protect their national steel industries from the economically mandated cutback in production capacity through substantial subsidization. International competition has thus degenerated, …

Competition, Integration And Economic Efficiency In The Eec From The Point Of View Of The Private Firm, Michel Waelbroeck

Michigan Law Review

As early as 1956, experts appointed by the six original Member State governments to investigate measures to pursue integration after the failure of the European Defence Community clearly established this link between the abolition of barriers to trade and an increase in the intensity of competition. In what has come to be known as the "Spaak Report," the experts noted the technology gap then separating Europe from the United States and proposed, as a remedial measure, the creation of a ''vast zone of common economic policy, constituting a powerful production unit, and allowing a continued expansion, and increased stability, an …

Third World Trade Partnership: Supranational Authority Vs. National Extraterritorial Antitrust--A Plea For "Harmonized" Regionalism, Wolfgang Fikentscher

Michigan Law Review

That "Third World countries" should receive the assistance of the "industrialized nations" in increasing the level of their economic development is a matter beyond dispute. Yet the years following the "economic decade" of the 1970's have made apparent a crisis in the concepts underlying this philosophy of Third World assistance. The nature of this crisis has not yet been fully ascertained, and the following text does not undertake that task. Rather, it starts from the general feeling among experts involved in one way or another with "development aid" that the paths so far followed and the methods so far applied …

Res Judicata And Multi-State Integration, Lea Brilmayer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Civil Judgment Recognition and the Integration of Multiple-State Associations: Central America, the United States of America, and the European Economic Community by Robert C. Casad