Law Commons^™

Tying The Knot: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Understanding The Human Right To Adequate Nutrition, Jessica Fanzo, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Elizabeth F. Fox, Anna Bulman

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Malnutrition is alarmingly prevalent, affecting one in three people worldwide. In this Article, we argue that a key reason the global community has been unsuccessful in combating malnutrition is a lack of clarity outside the field of nutrition regarding the true meaning of “nutrition.” In particular, this has limited the effectiveness of international human rights law as a mechanism for addressing malnutrition.

In this interdisciplinary Article, which draws from both the legal and nutrition fields, we unpack the meaning of nutrition and demonstrate that a standalone right to adequate nutrition does indeed exist in international human rights law as a …

Multilateralism’S Life-Cycle, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Does multilateralism have a life-cycle? Perhaps paradoxically, this essay suggests that current pressures on multilateralism and multilateral institutions, including threatened withdrawals by the United Kingdom from the European Union, the United States from the Paris climate change agreement, South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia from the International Criminal Court, and others, may be natural symptoms of those institutions’ relative success. Successful multilateralism and multilateral institutions, this essay argues, has four intertwined effects, which together, make continued multilateralism more difficult: (1) the wider dispersion of wealth or power among members, (2) the decreasing value for members of issue linkages, (3) changing assessment …

Presidential Control Over International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith

Faculty Scholarship

Presidents have come to dominate the making, interpretation, and termination of international law for the United States. Often without specific congressional concurrence, and sometimes even when it is likely that Congress would disagree, the President has developed the authority to:

(a) make a vast array of international obligations for the United States, through both written agreements and the development of customary international law;

(b) make increasingly consequential political commitments for the United States on practically any topic;

(c) interpret these obligations and commitments; and

(d) terminate or withdraw from these obligations and commitments.

While others have examined pieces of this …

Treaty Exit And Intra-Branch Conflict At The Interface Of International And Domestic Law, Laurence R.. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter, forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law, considers two important and unresolved issues raised by unilateral withdrawal from or denunciation of treaties. The first issue concerns whether treaty obligations end in both international and domestic law after a state leaves a treaty. Exit often produces the same effects in both legal systems, but some withdrawals bifurcate a treaty’s status, ending its obligations in domestic law but continuing to bind the state internationally, or vice versa. The second issue concerns denunciations initiated by different branches of government. The decision to withdraw from a treaty is usually …

Expectations As Property: Histories, Contexualizations, Critiques, Freya Irani, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

The last four decades have seen an enormous expansion in the number of international investment treaties (particularly bilateral investment treaties) and in investment treaty-based arbitrations and awards. Traditionally made between capital-exporters and capital-importing states (that is, along a North-South axis), such treaties generally assure investors of one signatory state (the "home state") protection on the basis of pre-determined standards in the other signatory state or states (the "host state"). Such treaties also provide for compensation in case of breaches of these standards, and give investors recourse to arbitration in case of disputes. Given these provisions alongside arbitral treaties themselves, in …

China And Beps, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Haiyan Xu

Articles

This article provides an overview of China’s reaction to the G20/OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project. From 2013 to 2015, the OECD developed a series of actions designed to address BEPS activities by multinational enterprises, culminating in a final report of 15 action steps. The article reviews and explains China’s reaction to the BEPS project and its actions in detail, with a particular focus on transfer pricing issues. It shows that China has actively participated in both developing and implementing the BEPS project. The article further suggests that in the post-BEPS era, China is expected to implement the …

Book Review, Anna Spain Bradley

Publications

No abstract provided.