Law Commons^™

A Creditable Vat?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In the early 1990s, Bolivia tried to adopt a popular U.S. tax reform proposal: replacing its corporate income tax with a cash-flow -type consumption tax, broadly similar in structure to taxes proposed by a long line of theorists from Prof. William Andrews in 1974 to the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2006. Unfortunately, the Bolivian experiment ran into an insuperable obstacle: the U.S. foreign tax credit (FTC) rules. The U.S. Treasury decided that the Bolivian tax would not be creditable for U.S. corporations investing in Bolivia. Given the importance of U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) for Bolivia, …

Can China Promote Electronic Commerce Through Law Reform? Some Preliminary Case Study Evidence, Jane K. Winn, Song Yuping

Articles

The government of the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) has announced its intention to make China a global leader in innovation by 2020. Many Chinese business leaders share this goal. The primary focus of this national strategy is to transform China into an exporter of high-technology products based on Chinese designs rather than merely a low cost, high volume manufacturer of products based on technology developed in other countries.

This paper will examine the implications for this strategy with regard to the use of computerized management information systems by Chinese businesses, and its relationship to recent law reform efforts intended …

Zapata Retold: Attorneys' Fees Are (Still) Not Governed By The Cisg, Harry Flechtner, Joseph Lookofsky

Articles

In this work, the authors reiterate and expand on their conclusion that the question of reimbursement for attorney fees incurred in the course of litigating a claim under the United Nations Sales Convention (CISG) is beyond the scope of the CISG, and is governed by domestic law. As discussed in the paper, this conclusion is in line with a recent CISG Advisory Council Opinion (Advisory Council Opinion No. 6) dealing with the calculation of damages under Article 74 of the CISG. We argue that relegating to domestic law the question of recovering attorney fees incurred during litigation over a CISG …

A Gambling Paradox: Why An Origin-Neutral 'Zero-Quota' Is Not A Quota Under Gats Article Xvi, Donald H. Regan

Articles

In US-Gambling, the Appellate Body held that an origin-neutral prohibition on remote gambling (which is how they mostly viewed the United States law) was "in effect" a "zero-quota", and that such a "zero-quota" violated GATS Article XVI:2. That holding has been widely criticized, especially for what critics refer to as the Appellate Body's "effects test". This article argues that the Appellate Body's "in effect" analysis is not an "effects test" and is not the real problem. The real mistake is regarding a so-called "zero-quota" as a quota under Article XVI. That is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the word …

The Meaning Of 'Necessary' In Gatt Article Xx And Gats Article Xiv: The Myth Of Cost-Benefit Balancing, Donald H. Regan

Articles

Conventional wisdom tells us that in Korea–Beef, the Appellate Body interpreted the word ‘necessary’ in GATT Article XX to require a cost–benefit balancing test. The Appellate Body is supposed to have applied this test also in EC–Asbestos, US–Gambling (involving GATS Article XIV), and Dominican Republic–Cigarettes. In this article I demonstrate, by detailed analysis of the opinions, that the Appellate Body has never engaged in such balancing. They have stated the balancing test, but in every case they have also stated the principle that Members get to choose their own level of protection, which is logically inconsistent with judicial review by …