Law Commons^™

Review Of Double Taxation And The League Of Nations, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Should we continue adapting the OECD Model to address tax challenges arising from digitalization of the economy or has the time come for radical reform? Sunita Jogarajan asked that question in her last study of the League of Nations' work on double taxation in the 1920s. The historical analysis provided in her book seems to suggest that the international tax regime will continue to inevitably evolve and the OECD Model can adapt. Her extensive archival research, conducted at the League of Nations Archives, the United Kingdom National Archives (London) and the Seligman Archives, Columbia University (New York), clearly demonstrates that …

Against Populist Isolationism: New Asian Regionalism And Global South Powers In International Economic Law, Pasha L. Hsieh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article provides the most up-to-date examination of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which is poised to become the world’s largest free trade agreement (FTA). It argues that the 16-country mega-FTA will galvanize the paradigm shift in Asian regionalism and build a normative foundation for the Global South in international economic law. Based on intertwined theoretical and substantive claims, this article opens an inquiry into the assertive legalism of developing nations in the new regional economic order. It further manifests the pivotal force of emerging economies against populist isolationism in the Trump era that undermines the neoliberal foundation of …

Multilateral Economic Institutions And U.S. Foreign Policy: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Multilateral Int'l Dev., Multilateral Insts., & Int'l Econ., Energy, & Envtl. Pol'y Of The S. Comm. On Foreign Relations, 115th Cong., Nov. 27, 2018 (Statement Of Jennifer A. Hillman), Jennifer A. Hillman

Testimony Before Congress

Virtually every major international gathering of world leaders recently has ended in failure—or at least failure to reach enough agreement to issue a concluding statement or communique. These failures come at a time when many have been looking for signs that world leaders would come together to address the most pressing problems facing the world—including climate change, the breakdown in the rules of the international trading system, the need everywhere for good jobs that pay a living wage, and rapidly growing income inequality.

The failure of these meetings to produce formal agreements—or even specific paths to reaching agreements in the …

Global Investment Rules As A Site For Moral Inquiry, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

The legal regime regulating cross-border investment gives key rights to foreign investors and places significant duties on states hosting that investment. It also raises distinctive moral questions due to its potential to constrain a state’s ability to manage its economy and protect its people. Yet international investment law remains virtually untouched as a subject of philosophical inquiry. The questions of international political morality surrounding investment rules can be mapped through the lens of two critiques of the law – that it systemically takes advantage of the global South and that it constrains the policy choices of states hosting investment. Each …

Infringement, Unbound, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Tpp, Rcep And The Future Of Copyright Norm-Setting In The Asian Pacific, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

The past decade has seen two mega-regional intellectual property norm-setting exercises focusing on countries in the Asian Pacific region: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Taken together, these two mega-regional norm-setting exercises will have unlimited potential to shape future copyright norms in the Asian Pacific region.

For countries involved in either the TPP or RCEP negotiations, legal obligations concerning new protection and enforcement standards will have to be incorporated into domestic law once the applicable agreement enters into force. These standards can be quite burdensome, as they often exceed what is currently required by the …

The User Rights Database: Measuring The Impact Of Opening Copyright Exceptions, Sean Flynn, Michael Palmedo

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

International and domestic copyright law reform around the world is increasingly focused on how copyright exceptions — a.k.a. “user rights” —should be expanded to promote maximum innovation, creativity, and access to knowledge in the digital age. These efforts are guided by a relatively rich theoretical literature. However, few empirical studies explore the social and economic impact of expanding user rights in the digital era. One reason for this gap has been the absence of a tool measuring the key independent variable – changes in copyright user rights over time and between countries. We are developing such a tool, which we …

Outcome Report Of Roundtable On International Investment Regime And Access To Justice, Michelle Chan, Kanika Gupta, Jesse Coleman, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

On October 18, 2017, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and the CCSI co-hosted a one-day roundtable on the impacts of the international investment regime on access to justice for investment-affected individuals and communities.

Held at Columbia University in New York, the roundtable brought together 32 individuals from civil society organizations, communities affected by investments at the heart of investor-state claims, governments, academia, donor organizations, UN mandate holders, and other stakeholder groups. The roundtable provided an opportunity for participants to: (i) explore and assess the specific impacts of international investment agreements and investor-state dispute settlement on access …

Dictum On Dicta: Obiter Dicta In Wto Disputes, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper discusses an important legal issue raised by the United States in its recent attempt to block the reappointment of an Appellate Body member. According to the US, in some of his decisions, the member has made overreaching findings that amount to obiter dicta. As obiter dictum is a unique concept in the Common Law system, the US argument may only stand if the concept may be found in the WTO legal system as well. With a careful analysis of the concept of dicta in Common Law and a close examination of the effects of past panel and Appellate …

Non-Parties: The Negative Externalities Of Regional Trade Agreements In A Private Law Perspective, Daniela Caruso

Faculty Scholarship

In private law theory and in international trade law alike, a new strand of scholarship has emerged in recent years. This strand is characterized by a focus on market actors who are excluded from deals struck by other parties and suffer economic hardship as a result. Scholars have also focused on doctrines and legal concepts apt to identify this type of hardship and to provide non-parties with justiciable claims and remedies. Private-law and trade-law scholars involved in this mode of research are often moved by justice concerns and by the realization that rules based solely on the enforcement of bilateral …

Leaders In The Expansive And Restrictive Interpretation Of Investment Treaties: A Descriptive Study Of Isds Awards To 2010, Gus Van Harten

Articles & Book Chapters

This article provides an empirical analysis of interpretive discretion in investor–state dis- pute settlement (ISDS). Since the late 1990s, foreign investors have brought hundreds of investment treaty claims against states, leading to numerous awards in which arbitrators have interpreted investment treaties. Arbitrators may resolve ambiguities in the treaties in expansive or restrictive ways, thereby affecting the compensatory promise of ISDS for foreign investors and corresponding risks for states. Which arbitrators have contributed most to expansive or restrictive approaches? To examine this question, data was analysed on arbitrators’ resolutions of contested legal issues, such as the permissibility of parallel or minority …

Ukraine And The Evaporating Hyphen Of Market-Democracy, Monica Eppinger

All Faculty Scholarship

This post is part of the series Lessons for Liberalism from the “Illiberal East”

Information wars, fake news, kompromat: surprised Ukrainians have found their lexicon for foreign interference spread as loan-words across a putative new Cold War. Narratives of hegemony long familiar in Ukraine have metastasized, and their protagonists—troll hordes, political technologists, the Paul Manaforts and Victoria Nulands—have been set loose far beyond Ukrainian borders. For those who are anxious that liberalism is stumbling into traps laid by foreign intelligence, stuck trading off with fascism and socialism or otherwise in crisis, Ukraine’s recent history …

Does The United States Still Care About Complying With Its Wto Obligations?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (“TCJA”) contains a provision that on its face appears to be a blatant violation of the WTO’s Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM) rules. New IRC section 250 applies a reduced 13.125% tax rate to “foreign derived intangible income” (FDII), which is defined as income derived in connection with (1) property that is sold by the taxpayer to any foreign person for a foreign use or (2) services to any foreign person or with respect to foreign property. In other words, this category comprises exports for property and services, including royalties from the …

A History Of Law And Lawyers In The Gatt/Wto. Edited By Gabrielle Marceau., Meredith Kolsky Lewis

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Free Trade In Electric Power, Joel B. Eisen, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

This Article develops the core legal framework of a new electricity-trading ecosystem in which anyone, anytime, anywhere, can trade electricity in any amount with anyone else. The proliferation of solar and other distributed energy resources, business model innovation in the sharing economy, and climate change present enormous challenges — and opportunities — for America’s energy economy. But the electricity industry is ill equipped to adapt to and benefit from these transformative forces, with much of its physical infrastructure, regulatory institutions, and business models a relic of the early days of electrification. We suggest a systematic rethinking to usher in a …

Convergence And Divergence In International Economic Law And Politics, Sungjoon Cho, Jürgen Kurtz

All Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the phenomena of convergence and divergence in international economic law. It argues that both international trade and investment law have been forced to overcome a structural (legal-institutional) prioritization of market goals via competing social regulatory concerns. It is at this stress point that we argue that a powerful set of converging and procedurally orientated hermeneutics can be identified in the jurisprudence that, properly employed, could significantly bolster the elasticity and durability of state commitment to international economic law constraints. There remain, however, continuing textual and systemic divergences at play, which opponents will often dismiss for reasons of …

When The Chinese Intellectual Property System Hits 35, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores what it means for the Chinese intellectual property system to hit 35. It begins by briefly recapturing the system’s three phases of development. It discusses the system’s evolution from its birth all the way to the present. The article then explores three different meanings of a middle-aged Chinese intellectual property system – one for intellectual property reform, one for China, and one for the TRIPS Agreement and the global intellectual property community.

The Wto Transparency Obligations And China, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

When it acceded to the WTO in 2001, China accepted comprehensive transparency obligations as well as substantive commitments covering both market access and rules issues. Initially designed to deal with its opaque trade law regime, the transparency obligations were also expected to help democratize the legislative process and promote the development of the rule of law in China. Now that more than 15 years have passed, an important question is: have the transparency obligations delivered on their original promise? This article answers the question by reviewing how the transparency obligations have worked in practice. It notes that, while transparency has …

The Wto Transparency Obligations And China, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

When it acceded to the WTO in 2001, China accepted comprehensive transparency obligations as well as substantive commitments covering both market access and rules issues. Initially designed to deal with its opaque trade law regime, the transparency obligations were also expected to help democratize the legislative process and promote the development of the rule of law in China. Now that more than 15 years have passed, an important question is: have the transparency obligations delivered on their original promise? This article answers the question by reviewing how the transparency obligations have worked in practice. It notes that, while transparency has …

A Vatcoin Solution To Mtic Fraud: Past Efforts, Present Technology, And The Eu’S 2017 Proposal, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Mike Cheetham, Camille Tirand

Faculty Scholarship

On October 4, 2017, in an effort to recover some of the VAT lost annually, the European Commission proposed “far-reaching reforms.” The immediate target is a €50 billion slice of an estimated €150 billion overall annual loss. In its proposal the Commission is looking only at Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC) fraud in goods.

Goods (alone) are targeted.

If we have learned anything about MTIC fraud since January 1, 1993, it is that fraudsters engaged in this activity are exceptionally agile. MTIC frauds migrate and mutate on command. For example, MTIC fraud in cell phones quickly migrated to computer chips in …

Regulation Of Digital Trade In Us Free Trade Agreements: From Trade Regulation To Digital Regulation, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article reviews the evolution of rules on digital trade in US Free Trade Agreements (US FTAs), and argues that the US approach has shifted from treating it largely as a traditional trade issue to recognizing its unique digital nature and tailoring the rules accordingly, as it has done in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. The article begins with a review of the efforts to regulate e-commerce in the WTO, as well as the achievements of the pre-TPP US FTAs so far, followed by a critical appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the e-commerce chapter in the TPP. It …

Regulation Of Digital Trade In Us Free Trade Agreements: From Trade Regulation To Digital Regulation, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article reviews the evolution of rules on digital trade in US Free Trade Agreements (US FTAs), and argues that the US approach has shifted from treating it largely as a traditional trade issue to recognizing its unique digital nature and tailoring the rules accordingly, as it has done in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. The article begins with a review of the efforts to regulate e-commerce in the WTO, as well as the achievements of the pre-TPP US FTAs so far, followed by a critical appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the e-commerce chapter in the TPP. It …

Shipping And Climate Change: International Law And Policy Considerations, Aldo Chircop, Meinhard Doelle, Ryan Gauvin

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This report investigates the international law and policy challenges to the determination of the international shipping industry's contribution to climate change mitigation efforts through the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations and the competent intergovernmental organization with respect to shipping in international law. The report sets out the international legal framework that serves as context for the IMO efforts, the challenge of regulating greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping and the process and issues in determining the industry's 'fair share' of mitigation efforts and potential legal pathways. The report concludes with general, policy and legal …

China's Rise, The U.S., And The Wto: Perspectives From International Relations Theory, Jacques Delisle

All Faculty Scholarship

What do China’s dramatic economic rise, engagement with the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) (and other established features of the international economic legal order), and rising assertiveness in external relations tell us about China’s past and likely future relationship to status quo international economic legal institutions and the norms they instantiate? What do these developments indicate about prospects for those institutions and norms? In China’s Rise: How it Took on the U.S. at the WTO, Gregory Shaffer and Henry Gao offer, or point us toward, answers to these questions. They do so on a grander scale than their relatively modest …

Fail To Comment At Your Own Risk: Does Issue Exhaustion Have A Place In Judicial Review Of Rules?, Jeffrey Lubbers

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The classic version of the exhaustion-of-remedies requirement generally requires a party to go through all the stages of an administrative adjudication before going to court. However, the doctrine has developed a new permutation, covering situations where a petitioner for judicial review did follow all the steps of the administrative appeals process, but had failed to raise in that process the issues now sought to be litigated in court. In those cases, which have been called “issue exhaustion” cases, the thwarted petitioner will likely be out of luck since normally there is no further opportunity to raise the issue at the …

International Contracts, William P. Johnson, Sabin Volciuc-Ionescu, Catalin-Sergiu Dinu, Katya Logunov, Adrián Lucio Furman, Adam Rose, Willem Den Hertog

All Faculty Scholarship

This article identifies some of the key developments for international contracts that occurred in 2017 in a variety of jurisdictions, with particular attention given to commercial relationships that arise in connection with product distribution. Specifically, in this article we cover developments concerning international sales law (the CISG), choice of law in Romania, franchising in Canada, termination of commercial agency in Argentina, a court decision on scope of commercial agency law in the UK, and the creation of a new commercial court in the Netherlands.

A Blueprint For A New American Trade Policy, Timothy Meyer, Ganesh Sitaraman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In recent years, it has become clear that American trade policy needs to change. For decades, U.S. policy has reflected the implicit assumption that trade liberalization is beneficial for everyone, with few distributional downsides over time. But this assumption hasn’t been borne out. Instead, decades of trade liberalization have led to a backlash that resulted in both 2016 presidential nominees opposing the Obama Administration’s proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). And since 2017, President Donald Trump has begun a trade war with China; raised tariffs on the grounds of protecting national security; renegotiated NAFTA, though on terms that do not obviously …

Building Multilateral Anticorruption Enforcement: Analogies Between International Trade & Anti-Bribery Law, Rachel Brewster, Christine Dryden

Faculty Scholarship

In the last twenty years, the United States government has put substantial resources behind the fight against .foreign bribery by using the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to prosecute unilaterally foreign and domestic companies who engage in corruption abroad. The United States is not entirely alone in this effort, but other countries have been far less vigorous in investing resources in investigations and prosecuting cases. Because of the unilateral and extraterritorial nature of FCPA prosecutions, these cases are sometimes controversial as foreign governments resist American influence in their commercial relations.

In response to this international tension, as well 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 …

Justifying India's Patent Position To The United States International Trade Commission And Office Of The United States Trade Representative, Sean Flynn, Srividhya Ragavan, Brook Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.