Law Commons^™

Introduction: Imagining Post-Neoliberal Regulatory Subjectivities, Mika Viljanen Dr, Mikko Rajavuori, Tal Kastner

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

To explore these tentative diagnoses and conceptualizations we called for papers engaging different aspects of law's subjectivity turn. A selection of papers that map the possible genealogies for the emergence of post-neoliberal law, address the implications of anthropomorphic corporate regulation, or analyze transformations in sovereign subjectivities is now published in this symposium issue. The papers take up and make salient an array of the big questions of our day.

While overlapping, the papers can be broadly divided into two categories. The first category consists of papers that explore the internal make-up of legal and regulatory subjectivities. Drawing on history, queer …

Transatlantic Influences On American Corporate Jurisprudence: Theorizing The Corporation In The United States, Tara Helfman

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In interpreting and evaluating the history of the Supreme Court's corporate jurisprudence, legal scholars have deployed three broad theories of corporate legal personality: the aggregate entity theory, the artificial entity theory, and the real entity theory. While these theories are powerful ways of conceptualizing the corporation, this article shows that they have not been as central to the Supreme Court's corporate jurisprudence as recent scholarship suggests. It instead argues that historic transformations in the high court's corporate jurisprudence are best understood in light of contemporary intellectual currents rather than through an expost facto application of the aggregate, artificial, and real …

Courage, Postimmunity Politics, And The Regulation Of The Queer Subject, Chantal Nadeau

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In this paper, I argue that courage is invoked in contemporary political discourses in such a way as to regulate queer legal subjectivities. That is, the discourses of courage re-articulate the social, legal, and political relations that define and restrict the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) citizens. Drawing on Roberto Esposito's theoretical elaboration of the concept of immunity, I remap the legal and political dynamics through which nations incorporate LGBT citizens into the polity. I discuss how the regulation of gay rights in a growing number of democracies in Europe, the Americas, and South Africa has contributed …

Making Banks On A Global Scale: Management-Based Regulation As Agencement, Mika Viljanen

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article seeks to provide a theoretical account of how management-based regulation (MBR), a new regulatory style used by many global regulators, affects its targets. The article centers on a case study. It introduces agencement theory as the theoretical heuristic to inform the analysis of a global, large-scale MBR scheme, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision's Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Program (ICAAP). In agencement theory, agency is understood in a neomaterialist frame. The core idea is that an actor's actions are determined by the material assemblage that constitutes her. The agencement heuristic allows ICAAP to be conceptualized as a regulatory …

"I'M Just Some Guy": Positing And Leveraging Legal Subjects In Consumer Contracts And The Global Market, Tal Kastner

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article considers how legal frameworks shape the autonomous subject in a global economy. It makes salient the ways that different legal frameworks presume and enforce a particular subjectivity by positing certain behavioral expectations of various subjects. It does so through a focus on the underexplored rhetoric and implicit narratives of consumer contract law and transactional practice in the American and European regimes. By comparing the approach of the European Union to consumer contract, which posits the consumer as facing significant constraints on agency, to that in the United States, which elides functional limits of consumer knowledge and choice, this …

The Esa Guidelines: Soft Law And Subjectivity In The European Financial Market-Capturing The Administrative Influence, Jakob Schemmel

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The disastrous performance of European financial-market regulation during the 2008 financial crisis convinced the European powers-that- be of the urgent need for further integration. Since then the European Union (EU) has established three European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs), which are commissioned to enhance capacity and harmonization of the European banking, insurance, and capital markets law. In carrying out this task, the ESAs employ so called ESA Guidelines, which have caught the attention of practitioners and scholars alike. As soft law, they bear a strong resemblance to instruments used on the global level to regulate the financial markets and therefore might fall …

Documentation And Emotions: Producing Displaced Legal Subjects, Susan M. Sterett

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Disasters are globally inflected today in humanitarian assistance, the organizations that support people after disaster and operate globally, and in the mobilization of arguments international human rights arguments. The domestic bureaucratic processes of humanitarian assistance after disaster in the United States do not state these connections; after Hurricane Katrina in the United States, they were most evident in the people and organizations that helped, and in the flow of humanitarian assistance from around the world that paid for assistance. Second, domestic documents for claiming assistance must limit that assistance to people hurt in disaster. That means they assist people who …

The International Investment Regime After The Global Crisis Of Neoliberalism: Rupture Or Continuity?, Nicolas Perrone

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article aims to show that the tools being used to recalibrate the international investment regime, in particular proportionality and corporate social responsibility, constitute continuity rather than rupture with neoliberalism and neoliberal legality. Neoliberalism has been discredited, and few actors suggest a return to self-regulation after the 2008 global economic crisis. This call for regulation, however, finds international economic law scholarship divided between those who claim that standards of review and corporate social responsibility can solve the crisis of neoliberalism, and those who believe that the problem is more profound. In the case of the international investment regime, this article …

Contract-Boundary-Spanning Governance Mechanisms: Conceptualizing Fragmented And Globalized Production As Collectively Governed Entities, Jaakko Salminen

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Conceptualizing how private actors can and should control their supply chains is a tricky question with both economic and legal dimensions. The topic is of extreme importance in today's global economy. On the one hand, this importance is highlighted by events such as the catastrophic and deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh and the economic fiasco of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant construction project in Finland, both arguably caused by the lack of effective supply chain governance. On the other hand, the potential benefits of successful supply chain governance, shown by examples such as open …

Puzzling Out Law's Person, David A. Wishart

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

How is the person to be conceptualized in law? Is it subject or object, what is its ontology and teleology? These are old questions, but ones newly raised by changing ideas of the province of the state, technology, and the extension of legality. Examples include the protection of the fetus in utero; contractualization of relationships, including those of welfare; the regulation of intimacy; the idea of government business; interventions in the business of the firm; and challenges to legal entitihood as constructing personhood. Much discussion of these is incommensurable in terms of place, culture, and discipline. This article ventures a …

Contesting Austerity: The Potential And Pitfalls Of Socioeconomic Rights Discourse, Joe Wills, Ben Warwick

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article argues that, while socioeconomic rights have the potential to contribute to the contestation of austerity measures and the reimagining of a "postneoliberal" order, there are a number of features of socioeconomic rights as currently constructed under international law that limit these possibilities. We identify these limitations as falling into two categories: "contingent" and "structural". Contingent limitations are shortcomings in the current constitution of socioeconomic rights law that undermine its effectiveness for challenging austerity measures. By contrast, the structural limitations of socioeconomic rights law are those that pertain to the more basic presuppositions and axioms that provide the foundations …

Citizens Of Sinking Islands: Early Victims Of Climate Change, Erin Halstead

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Note discusses the effects of climate change that threaten Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Specifically, with increasing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting in rising sea levels and higher frequency of extreme weather events, many citizens of SIDS are forced abandon their homelands, which are no longer livable. Although SIDS are some of the smallest contributors to GHG emissions, and therefore contribute the least to climate change, SIDS are some of the countries most heavily affected by the negative effects of climate change. The global community has an obligation to accommodate these displaced people, partially due to the significant …

State Ownership And The United Nations Business And Human Rights Agenda: Three Instruments, Three Narratives, Mikko Rajavuori

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The rise of globally-oriented state ownership has emerged as a crucial issue across political, economic, and legal planes during the past decade. Contrary to the traditional approach where state ownership is viewed primarily through trade law, antitrust law, and corporate law, this article discusses the proliferating state shareholder power in relation to international human rights law. In particular, the article interrogates three recent U.N. human rights governance instruments by using narratives that highlight perils, potential, and specialty of state ownership in the emerging business and human rights agenda. It is argued that the U.N. instruments realize the changes in the …

Surrogacy And Citizenship: A Conjunctive Solution To A Global Problem, Caitlin Pyrce

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

People around the world are turning to surrogacy when they are unable to conceive by traditional means. When surrogacy turns traditional notions of parentage upside down, however, countries struggle to find efficient regulations that protect their own citizens, while still recognizing the increasingly global nature of modern society. Children born through surrogacy arrangements between Thai surrogate mothers and Australian intended parents have been confronted with the consequences of inadequate regulation. This note argues that in addition to revising surrogacy legislation to reflect the increasingly transient nature of society, countries must make mirror citizenship reform so children born through surrogacy are …

Mannington Mills, Inc. V. Congoleum Corp.: A Perfect Storm Of Extraterritoriality In Patent And Antitrust Law, Benjamin Holt

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The invention of chemically embossed cushioned vinyl flooring revolutionized the flooring industry in the mid-1900s, and the patents on this technology became the basis for large-scale litigation between two of the industry's leaders. This is the story of Mannington Mills, Inc. v. Congoleum Corp.-a case that implicated foreign patent rights and the territorial nature of patent law, the extraterritorial scope of U.S. antitrust law (at a time when this scope was changing and uncertain), competing doctrines of jurisdiction and abstention, and emerging international comity concerns. These legal issues combined to create a perfect storm of extraterritoriality by presenting unique, complex …

Toward An International Constitution Of Patient Rights, Alison Poklaski

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the past decade, medical tourism-the travel of patients across borders to receive medical treatment-has undergone unprecedented growth, fueled by the globalization of health care and related industries. While medical tourism can benefit patients through increased access to treatment and cost-savings, medical travel also raises concerns about ensuring quality of care and legal redress in medical malpractice. Moreover, existing regulations fail to address these unprecedented issues. The multilateral adoption of an International Constitution of Patient Rights (ICPR) is necessary in order to more effectively preserve medical tourism's benefits and guard against its risks.

Taking To The Sea: The Modern Seasteading Movement In The Context Of Other Historical Intentional Communities, Megan Binder

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Though its mission may seem to belong to the realm of science fiction-establishing self-sufficient, floating cities on the high seas-the modern seasteading movement is simply the next iteration of mankind's long quest to establish more perfect societies. If they wish to accomplish their goals, seasteaders must be prepared to confront and overcome serious obstacles on technological, social, and legal fronts. Reviewing other historical examples of intentional communities offers a glimpse of the potential challenges that are common across all such movements and suggests that, to ensure long-term success, seasteaders may benefit longterm from pursuing international recognition of sovereignty for their …

Will The Ebola Epidemic Serve To Make Reform Of The Broken Health Research And Development Framework Go Viral?, Jeremy Mcdonald

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa has captured the public imagination as few other epidemics have, as its rapid spread and lethal effect demonstrated the devastating toll that infectious diseases can exact from a world unprepared to confront them. In light of the epidemic's tragic consequences, numerous experts have called for reform of the system of global health governance whose shortfalls allowed the epidemic to assume the horrifying dimensions it did. Among the many inadequacies that the outbreak uncovered is the insufficient amount of research into and development of treatments and vaccines for infectious diseases of poverty, among them …

Increasing Health Care Access In Yemen Through Community-Based Health Insurance, Matthew Fuss

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Note addresses the implementation of health insurance reform in Yemen. As a result of a system of user fees and a lack of health insurance, the current regime poses serious barriers to health care access for Yemen's uninsured citizens. When the dust settles from the ongoing conflict with Houthi rebels, the time will be ripe for replacing Yemen's health financing system. In order to rebuild trust and curb abuse in the public health system, legal reforms are required to implement health insurance through decentralized decision-making and accountability measures. The Welfare Regime Framework accommodates these general reforms through policies that …

Introduction: Global Human Rights Law And The Boundaries Of Statehood, Daniel Augenstein, Hans Lindahl

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The contributions collected in this Special Issue are the outcome of a colloquium on "Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood" held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa in March 2015. The colloquium is the first in a series of topics to be addressed within the STIAS research project, "Boundaries and Legal Authority in a Global Context," coordinated by Hans Lindahl and Louise du Toit. We would like to express our gratitude to STIAS for the funding and logistics of the colloquium. Our particular thanks are due to the director of STIAS, Hendrik …

The Temporal Rivalries Of Human Rights, Fleur E. Johns

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Nation-states' "boundaries" are produced in time: around official working hours and terms of office, for instance, and in the historicomythic "life of the nation." Global human rights practices affirm and depend on nation-states' temporal authority, while also calling that authority into question. In different ways, global markets do likewise. In recent decades, the ubiquity of both finance capital and international human rights law, among other factors, may have encouraged the fracturing of time into intervals of ever-decreasing length. Temporal authority premised on the long-term seems to have declining purchase, even as historicism and futurism abound, discouraging some modes of state-based …

Transformations In Statehood, The Investor- State Regime, And The New Constitutionalism, A. Claire Cutler

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper examines the changing boundaries of statehood resulting from transformations in the nature and operation of public and private authority over local and global politico-legal orders. Transformations in the political purposes of states are being driven by powerful elites who advance a new form of constitutional governance. New constitutionalism, as evidenced by the investor-state regime, subordinates the interests, purposes, and rights of national citizens to those of foreign, transnational politico-legal, and economic elites. This regime is a highly privatized order that is expanding in influence, both in terms of the commercial activities under its remit, and in terms of …

Fractured Territories And Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within And Beyond The State, Larry Catá Backer

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The problem of representation has become a central element for the development of human rights norms, not just within international organizations, but within states as well. The problem has been made acute by two significant changes in the organization of power that became visible after the 1950s. On one hand, the idea of the individual became more abstract. Mass democracy became symptomatic of a general trend toward the dissolution of the individual within a mass population, which was incarnated as the aggregation of its group characteristics, its statistics, and data. On the other hand, states were becoming less solid; the …

Some Newly Emergent Geographies Of Injustice: Boundaries And Borders In International Law, Upendra V. Baxi

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This conversation examines the relationship between the boundaries and borders in international law and the production of geographies of injustice through the lens of the colonial epistemologies, especially of private international law in the face of mass social disasters like the archetypal Bhopal catastrophe. I also address the languages and logics of coloniality and postcoloniality, as states of consciousness and social organization, under the complex and contradictory unity of neoliberalism.

Statehood, Power, And The New Face Of Consent, Sheldon Leader

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Individuals and groups are often subjected to power, both public and private, by eliciting their consent. Debate usually focuses on whether or not that consent is freely given or is vitiated by imbalances of strength between the bargaining parties. This essay focuses on a different issue, one that is largely passed over in legal and moral analyses: how far does and should consent bind one to accepting in advance changes in the future? There are signs of a fundamental shift in answering this question-a shift that particularly concerns the control of power in the economy. Industrial democracies may be abandoning …

Decentering Human Rights From The International Order Of States: The Alignment And Interaction Of Transnational Policy Channels, Radu G. Mares

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article accounts for recent developments in corporate social responsibility, international trade and investment law, international human rights law, development aid, and the laws of home states reaching extraterritorially in order to advance a regulatory perspective on commerce and human rights. While these developments are remarkable, the analysis documents the prevalence of softer strategies and a corresponding scarcity of coercive legalization strategies. The question, then, is how to reason about these recent developments and their genuine potential for human rights protection. The article proposes two elements-a root-cause orientation and the interaction of policy channels-as indispensable for a regulatory and systemic …

Human Rights And Global Public Goods: The Sound Of One Hand Clapping?, Neil Walker

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Each operating in a presumptively general or universal register, 'public goods" and "human rights" are among the most popular and visible contemporary carriers of ideas of global law and governance and are therefore prime sources for any broader project of global justice. Their combination, moreover, holds out the prospect of a fertile engagement between the two core concerns of modern political morality our collective requirements and potential (public goods) and our individual dignity and well-being (human rights). Yet for all their ambition, public goods and human rights each face the formidable challenge of placing considerations of political authority and political …

Corporations And The Limits Of State-Based Models For Protecting Fundamental Rights In International Law, David Bilchitz

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

At the heart of international law lies a central tension. On the one hand, the fundamental rights recognized in international treaties protect the fundamental interests of individuals, obligating all actors who can affect these rights. One the other hand, international law has often been conceived of as a system in which the only legitimate actors are states. In turn, only states can be bound by the fundamental rights obligations in international treaties. To address this tension, two models have been proposed. The first is an "Indirect duty" approach, whereby the state remains the primary duty-bearer and must itself "create" the …

One Pillar: Legal Authority And A Social License To Operate In A Global Context, Hans Lindahl

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The claim that businesses have a social license to operate acquires concrete form in the second pillar of the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in the fundamental distinction between "compliance with all applicable laws" and "respect for human rights." The aim of this paper is to critically examine the presuppositions that undergird this distinction and to explain how and why moving beyond state-centered thinking about law, in response to violations of human rights by globally operating businesses, requires acknowledging that there is one pillar that embraces states and businesses: the legal obligation to comply with international …

Color Blocking: How The Harmonization Of Color Protection May Catalyze Color Depletion In Global Markets, Arsha Hasan

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The Qualitex decision in 1995 inspired trademark reformation and harmonization worldwide for the protection of color marks. While protecting color trademarks has not created issues of market entry in domestic markets, the growth in the number of transnational market participants and an increased utilization of non-traditional branding may catalyze color depletion in international trade. After exploring how current advertising expenditure requirements and distinctiveness requirements affect the registrability and protection of a color mark, this Note offers potential global reforms to help minimize hurdles for small scale transnational participants and the threat of international color depletion. Specifically, due to consumers' increasing …