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Full-Text Articles in Law
Citizenship Overreach, Peter J. Spiro
Citizenship Overreach, Peter J. Spiro
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article examines international law limitations on the ascription of citizenship and national self-definition. The United States is exceptionally generous in its extension of citizenship. Alone among the major developed states, it extends citizenship to almost all persons in its territory at the moment of birth. This birthright citizenship is constitutionally protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. At the same time that it is generous at the front end, U.S. citizenship is sticky at the back. Termination of citizenship on the individual’s part can involve substantial fees. Expatriation is contingent on tax compliance and, in some cases, will implicate the recognition …
A Global Perspective On Citizenship-Based Taxation, Allison Christians
A Global Perspective On Citizenship-Based Taxation, Allison Christians
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article contends that, with regard to individuals who reside permanently outside of the United States, the global assistance sought under FATCA to enforce U.S. income taxation solely on the basis of citizenship violates international law. It argues that insisting upon foreign cooperation with the FATCA regime, under threat of serious economic penalties, is inconsistent with universally accepted norms regarding appropriate limits to the state’s jurisdiction to tax, while also being normatively unjustified. Accordingly, FATCA should be rejected by all other nation states to the extent it imposes any obligations with respect to individuals who permanently reside outside of, and …
Paper Compliance: How China Implements Wto Decisions , Timothy Webster
Paper Compliance: How China Implements Wto Decisions , Timothy Webster
Michigan Journal of International Law
China’s growing economic and military clout generates scrutiny, optimism, insecurity, opportunism, opprobrium, and unease around the world, especially in the United States. Many question China’s role on the world stage. Politicians and academics openly doubt China abides by international law and other global standards of state conduct promulgated by Western liberal democracies since the end of World War II. The game may change—international trade, territorial and maritime disputes, environmental law, human rights, arms control, riparian rights, cyber-crime, endangered species—but the concern remains the same: is China an international scofflaw?
Take The Long Way Home: Sub-Federal Integration Of Unratified And Non-Self-Executing Treaty Law, Lesley Wexler
Take The Long Way Home: Sub-Federal Integration Of Unratified And Non-Self-Executing Treaty Law, Lesley Wexler
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article introduces the longstanding treaty compliance debate and expands it to include the question of whether treaties influence sub-federal actors in non-ratifying countries. This Part draws on norm theory to conclude that sub-federal actors may use treaties and treaty processes as: (a) a framework to understand the underlying substantive issue, (b) a way to reduce drafting costs, (c) a focal point to measure compliance, (d) evidence of an international consensus, (e) a mechanism to express or signal a cosmopolitan identity, or (f) a springboard to criticize the current administration.
What's Your Sign? -- International Norms, Signals, And Compliance, Charles K. Whitehead
What's Your Sign? -- International Norms, Signals, And Compliance, Charles K. Whitehead
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article proposes a new approach to understanding state compliance with international obligations, positing that increased interaction among the world's regulators has reinforced network norms, as evidenced in part by a greater reliance among states on legally nonbinding instruments. This Article also begins to fill a gap in the growing scholarship on state compliance by proposing a better framework for understanding how international norms influence senior regulators and how they affect both state decisions to comply as well as levels of compliance.
International Treaty Enforcement As A Public Good: Institutional Deterrent Sanctions In International Environmental Agreements, Tseming Yang
International Treaty Enforcement As A Public Good: Institutional Deterrent Sanctions In International Environmental Agreements, Tseming Yang
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article approaches the issues through the lens of two general questions. First, what are the functions of treaty enforcement and institutional deterrent sanctions? Second, what are the obstacles to the effective deployment of institutional deterrent sanctions in response to noncompliance? This Article elaborates on the instrumental purposes of enforcement as well as its independent normative function. Much of the analysis follows the recent stream of works that combines both international law and international relations theory. These works offer a rich understanding of the conduct of states and the functioning of international legal regimes.
The Value Vacuum: Self-Enforcing Regimes And The Dilution Of The Normative Feedback Loop, Claire R. Kelly
The Value Vacuum: Self-Enforcing Regimes And The Dilution Of The Normative Feedback Loop, Claire R. Kelly
Michigan Journal of International Law
This article proposes a modified constructivist theory, which links liberalism and constructivism through the normative feedback loop. Part I briefly explains traditional international relations theories such as realism, institutionalism, liberalism and constructivism. A modified constructivist perspective espouses the presence of two constants: (i) assertion of national preferences by constituents for whom the state acts as an agent in international relations, and (ii) social construction of state identities through interaction with other states in the international arena.
The Concept Of Compliance As A Function Of Competing Conceptions Of International Law, Benedict Kingsbury
The Concept Of Compliance As A Function Of Competing Conceptions Of International Law, Benedict Kingsbury
Michigan Journal of International Law
The purpose of this article is to challenge the tendency in the existing literature to view "compliance" simply as "correspondence of behavior with legal rules." This tendency is intelligibly based in a theoretical view that law can properly be defined and understood as a body of rules and expresses a practical concern to get on with the important task of producing empirical studies of compliance. The logical corollary is that a reasonable degree of conformity between these rules and actual behavior is necessary to an efficacious legal system, so that recurrent and widespread non-conformity with rules would usually call into …
Why Nations Behave, Jose E. Alvarez
Why Nations Behave, Jose E. Alvarez
Michigan Journal of International Law
The idea for this symposium on "implementation, compliance and effectiveness" grew out of the 1997 annual meeting of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), devoted to that theme. As one of the co-chairs of that meeting, I suggested to the student editors of this journal that they solicit articles on a topic that has seized the attention of researchers within international law as well as in seemingly unrelated fields. As Professor Thomas Franck has indicated in a recent well-received book, an ever increasing number of scholars are going beyond well-worn debates about whether international law is truly "law" to …
Conceptual, Methodological And Substantive Issues Entwined In Studying Compliance, Harold K. Jacobson
Conceptual, Methodological And Substantive Issues Entwined In Studying Compliance, Harold K. Jacobson
Michigan Journal of International Law
In his insightful introduction to this collection Jose E. Alvarez refers to the popularity of studies of "why nations behave." He explains this popularity as a response to the increasing waves of international regulation that have occurred during the closing years of the twentieth century, regulation that frequently involves issues previously left to nation states. As one who has been a participant over the past decade in an effort to discover answers to the question that Alvarez put so clearly, the author is pleased by the broad interest that the subject has gained and feels privileged to have an opportunity …
Advancing The Law Of Weapons Control - Comparative Approaches To Strengthen Nuclear Non-Proliferation, David S. Gualtieri, Barry Kellman, Kenneth E. Apt, Edward A. Tanzman
Advancing The Law Of Weapons Control - Comparative Approaches To Strengthen Nuclear Non-Proliferation, David S. Gualtieri, Barry Kellman, Kenneth E. Apt, Edward A. Tanzman
Michigan Journal of International Law
This article analyzes in-depth the SAGSI recommendation that more effective safeguards draw upon "the elements (including the managed access provisions) contained in Part X of the Verification Annex to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.” SAGSI found that the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) offers approaches for verification and investigation that may be adaptable to the NPT.