Law Commons^™

Turnover Taxes: Their Origin, Fall From Grace, And Resurrection, Richard Pomp

Faculty Articles and Papers

The turnover tax, a hallmark of developing nations and even once blamed for Spain’s decline, has made a comeback in the states, starting with Ohio.

A turnover tax is a gross receipts tax that is applied every time a good or service “turns over,” that is, every time the good or service transfers from one entity to another for consideration. The tax base is therefore turnover, and the measure of the tax is gross receipts.

In this article, Professor Richard Pomp examines the turnover tax’s deep roots dating back to ancient Athens, and tracks its course from the time the …

Obscured By 'Willful Blindness': States' Preventive Obligations And The Meaning Of Acquiescence Under The Convention Against Torture, Jon Bauer

Faculty Articles and Papers

As U.S. asylum law becomes more restrictive, relief under the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT) has become the last hope for safety for many asylum seekers. But for those who face torture at the hands of non-State actors, CAT relief has proven extraordinarily hard to win. The CAT’s torture definition encompasses privately-inflicted harm only when it occurs with the consent or acquiescence of a public official. Agency decisions initially took this to mean that officials must willfully accept or tacitly approve the private party’s actions. Courts have rejected that approach as overly restrictive. But what they have adopted in its …

Le Début De La Désillusion Américaine Envers L’Europe Et Le Droit International, 1914-1946 [The Onset Of American Disillusionment With Europe And International Law: 1914-1946], Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

Many date the disillusionment of the United States with the international law and organization project to sometime after World War II. Actually, widespread American disillusionment with international law and organization began in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. Many Americans became convinced that European civilization had failed to emerge from the excesses of state sovereignty and militarism. This essay illustrates the onset of American disillusionment with Europe and with international law and organization between 1914 and 1946.

The Shadow Of Westphalia: Majoritarian Religions And Strasbourg Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

Throughout Europe, religious majoritarian cultures have been traditionally hostile to minority faiths. The European Court of Human Rights has been slow to apply Article 9, religious tolerance. Albeit, today it is generally accepted that no one religion is destined to become the common faith of Europe, it is still very difficult in European law and politics to say how much each of the 47 Member States of the states of the Council of Europe should be permitted to restrict religious liberty domestically to protect and nurture a majoritarian faith, especially a majoritarian Christian faith. Europe, in many ways, is still …

Region Codes And Human Rights, Molly Land

Faculty Articles and Papers

This essay considers what Professor Peter Yu’s article on DVD region coding, “Region Codes and the Territorial Mess,” illustrates about the challenges associated with using human rights law to respond to limitations on access to knowledge. The kind of activity that Professor Yu points to — the decisions of corporate actors pursuing their own interests that have significant unanticipated effects on individual rights — presents a recurring and thorny problem for those concerned about expression and culture today. At what point do these burdens constitute a human rights violation that can and should be regulated by the state? The essay …

Rebalancing Trips, Molly Land

Faculty Articles and Papers

Application of the World Trade Organization’s dispute resolution procedures to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) has provoked a variety of reactions over time. Initially perceived as a significant loss for developing countries, more recent responses maintain that these fears were unfounded. This Article argues that the availability of adjudication through the WTO has indeed had significant consequences for the policy space of developing countries — just not in the manner initially imagined. One of the most important yet underappreciated consequences of the decision to link trade and intellectual property has been the conflation of trade and …

The United States And International Law: The United Nations Finds A Home, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Americans And The Quest For An Ethical International Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

Foreign critics sometimes accuse Americans of taking a hypocritical stance on international law. They say we preach an ethical international law to others, but practice a selfishly utilitarian international law ourselves. Here is the remarkable opinion, given just last year, of a leading European international lawyer. Martti Koskenniemi, a distinguished Finnish scholar, is Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and a Global Professor of Law at New York University. Koskenniemi believes that the Europeans speak the language of universal international law, but: How differently the Americans see the world! Legalization, is just a policy choice, a matter …

How 'Wilsonian' Was Woodrow Wilson, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

This essay reveals how President Woodrow Wilson's passion for international law slowly developed over several stages in his life from his professorship at Princeton to his presidency. By exploring Wilson's conversion from a skeptic of international law to one of its greatest proponents, the author shows how Wilson's world view shaped American foreign policy and the political landscape.

Is International Law A European Conspiracy?, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

Reviewing B.S. Chimni, Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto, The Third World and International Order: Law, Politics And Globalization, pp. 47-73, ed. by A. Anghie, B. Chimni, K. Mickelson and O. Okafor (Leiden, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004).

Faith, The State, And The Humility Of International Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

Father Robert Drinan, long a leading advocate of human rights, has had a distinguished career serving as a U.S. congressman from Massachusetts, as Dean of the Boston College Law School, and now as Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Father Drinan's new book, Can God and Caesar Coexist?: Balancing Religious Freedom and International Law, sensitively and persuasively sets out the often tortuous relations among religion (the God of his title), national governments (Caesar), and international law (the new and possibly helpful partner in this relationship). My essay employs the facts and arguments in Father Drinan's Can God and …

The American Tradition Of International Law: Exceptionalism And Universalism, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And Imposed Constitutions, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Dred Scott And International Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

As we ponder the contemporary debate about the proper use of international and foreign law in interpreting U.S. constitutional law, it might be well to remember that in 1857, the Supreme Court, in its most infamous judgment, Dred Scott v. Sandford, was already struggling with the controversy. This Article looks first at the increasingly hostile position that international and foreign law took towards slavery in the period from the American Revolution to our Civil War. Second, we discuss the nine judicial opinions in Dred Scott and explain how the judges variously relied on international and foreign law to defend or …

Book Review: Ferrari & Durham, Law And Religion In Post-Communist Europe, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

A Sampler Of Religious Experiences In International Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

Religious principles, religious problems, and religious enthusiasts have all played profound, if sometimes little appreciated roles in the development of international law.' This essay highlights the impact of religion on international law by providing a sampler of religious experiences in international law, to wit: three suspicions international lawyers have of religion, two contributions made between religion and international law, and one great and telling similarity between religion and international law.

International Law As Fundamental Justice: James Brown Scott, Harold Hongju Koh, And The American Universalist Tradition Of International Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

I am delighted to have an opportunity to respond to Harold Hongju Koh's excellent Childress Lecture of October 3, 2001, at the Saint Louis University School of Law. It has been my great pleasure to know Harold since we were young lawyers in the 1970's, and most especially during the 1996-97 academic year when we were together on the Law Faculty at Oxford. Now, as always,my first and soundest instinct is to associate myself fully with Harold. I embrace his commitment to human rights at home and abroad, and applaud his dream for the globalization of freedom. Great American lawyers …

A 90 Year-Old Snapshot Of Our Family Of International Lawyers, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

It so happened that I was leafing through the Report of the 27th Conference (Paris, May 27-June 1, 1912) of the International Law Association (ILA)' on the same day that I received the Preliminary Program for the 96th ASIL Conference (Washington, March 13-16, 2002).2 Noting that the 2002 ASIL conference has as its twin themes "the legalization of international relations" and "the internationalization of legal relations," I thought it might be interesting and useful to see if I could find comparable themes in an international law conference ninety years ago. This led me to some observations about the similarities and …

The Case For Environmental Trade Sanctions, Richard Parker

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Efficacy Of Strasbourg Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Problem With Scorecards: How (And How Not) To Measure The Cost-Effectiveness Of Economic Sanctions, Richard Parker

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The European Human Rights System As A System Of Law, Richard Kay

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Comparative And The Critical Perspective In International Agreements, Ángel Oquendo

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Utility Of International Criminal Courts, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Russia And The Legality Of Strasbourg Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

The aim of this essay is to comment on Russia's accession to the Council of Europe and its probable accession to the European Convention on Human Rights from the perspective of the legal theory concerning the nature of obligation in international law and the law-like character of international law. The facts of Russia's accession test a philosophical argument that has been made elsewhere about the nature, efficacy and 'legality' of the legal system of the European Human Rights Convention. An important premise therein is that 'sometimes a happy (or unhappy) confluence of political decisions, social attitudes, and individual actors and …

The New Oppenheim And Its Theory Of International Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Some Comparative Remarks About The Efficacy Of International And Constitutional Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Verdugo Case: The United States And The Comity Of Nations, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

International Law, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

The recent developments in Eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf dramatize the efforts of the United States to muster the support of other states and international organizations in asserting principles of international law and process. These diplomatic initiatives to win a global consensus about the rule of law in international politics reflect an important turn in U.S. policy. In the past few decades the United States has mostly enunciated a parochial rhetoric regarding international law, treating it either as a sort of extension of United States law or as a flexible framework that somehow always promoted U.S. legal and political …

The Verdugo Case: The United States And The Comity Of Nations, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.