Law Commons^™

Oil, Gas, And Rhesus Monkeys: A New Framework For Natural Resources Under The Commercial Activity Exception, Madelaine J. Horn

Cornell International Law Journal

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) constitutes an exception for sovereign states to the normal jurisdictional rules that govern when parties are subject to suit in US courts. The commercial activity provision is a carveout within that broad exception-it deprives sovereign states of their exceptional immunity when they engage in commercial conduct. Within this framework, courts have used the natural resource rule to circumvent the commercial activity carveout and restore immunity to sovereign states. This Note argues that the rule should be abandoned in favor of a much more limited test, thereby increasing the number of sovereign states …

Can Soft Regulation Prevent Financial Crises?: The Dutch Central Bank's Supervision Of Behavior And Culture, John M. Conley, Cynthia A. Williams, Lodewijk Smeehuijzen, Deborah E. Rupp

Cornell International Law Journal

Financial regulation has traditionally been "hard": national legislatures and regulators (and sometimes international bodies) require certain kinds of behavior and forbid others, on pain of business sanctions, fines, or even criminal penalties. When a financial crisis happens, the usual after-the-fact response is more hard regulation-new laws, stricter regulations, and often entirely new regulatory agencies.That pattern goes back at least to the 1929 market crash that precipitated the Great Depression.

But the fact that financial crises still occur is leading many observers to wonder if more hard regulation is the best way to prevent the next one. However elaborate the regulatory …

Dam(N) Displacement: Compensation, Resettlement, And Indigeneity, Stephen R. Munzer

Cornell International Law Journal

Hydroelectric dams produce electricity, provide flood control, and improve agricultural irrigation. But the building and operation of these dams frequently involve forced displacement of local communities. Displacement often has an outsized impact on indigenous persons, who are disproportionately poor, repressed, and politically marginalized. One can limit these adverse effects in various ways: (1) taking seriously the ethics of dam-induced development, (2) rooting out corruption, (3) paying compensation at or near the beginning of dam projects, (4) using land-for-land exchanges, (5) disbursing resettlement funds as needed until displaced persons are firmly established in their new locations, and (6) having entities that …

Out Of The Legal Wilderness: Peacetime Espionage, International Law And The Existence Of Customary Exceptions, Inaki Navarrete Mr, Russell Buchan

Cornell International Law Journal

This Article demonstrates that peacetime espionage does not benefit from permissive customary international law exceptions. The mainstream view contends that, though peacetime espionage may contravene international law, developments in customary international law (CIL) nevertheless undercut State responsibility for such conduct. The gist of this view is that acts of espionage benefit from permissive CIL exceptions because its practice is widespread and accepted within the international society. However, the mainstream literature has rarely-if ever-meaningfully engaged with the practice of espionage in an effort to tease out the objective and subjective elements supportive of customary espionage exceptions. This Article closes this gap …

Vol. 51, No. 4 Table Of Contents

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.