Law Commons^™

The Law And Politics Of Ransomware, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What do Lady Gaga, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the city of Valdez in Alaska, and the court system of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul all have in common? They have all been victims of ransomware attacks, which are growing both in number and severity. In 2016, hackers perpetrated roughly four thousand ransomware attacks a day worldwide, a figure which was already alarming. By 2020, however, ransomware attacks reached a staggering number, between 20,000 and 30,000 per day in the United States alone. That is a ransomware attack every eleven seconds, each of which cost victims …

The Role Of Recognition In Kelsen's Account Of Legal Obligation And Political Duty, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Kelsen’s critique of absolute sovereignty famously appeals to a basic norm of international recognition. However, in his discussion of legal obligation, generally speaking, he notoriously rejects mutual recognition as having any normative consequence. I argue that this apparent contradiction in Kelsen's estimate regarding the normative force of recognition is resolved in his dynamic account of the democratic generation of law. Democracy is embedded within a modern political ethos that obligates legal subjects to recognize each other along four dimensions: as contractors whose mutually beneficial cooperation measures esteem by fair standards of contribution; as autonomous agents endowed with equal rights; as …

Sovereign Imaginaries: Visualizing The Sacred Foundation Of Law’S Authority, Richard K. Sherwin

Articles & Chapters

If a world is to be lived in, it must be founded. This foundational function belongs to the sovereign imagination. What a polity names as sovereign in the state of exception, when the sacred irrupts anew, is a matter of individual and collective responsibility. In this dispensation, law, politics, and religion become inescapably entangled in metaphysics. It behooves us to understand the nature and consequences of this state of affairs.

Religious Soft Power In Russian Foreign Policy: Constitutional Change And The Russian Orthodox Church, Robert C. Blitt

Scholarly Works

In this policy brief, Robert C. Blitt explores how the Kremlin continues to deepen its reliance on the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (ROC) as a lever of soft power in Russian foreign policy. Constitutional amendments ratified in July 2020 suggest that this church-state partnership is poised to grow stronger in the coming years. Recognizing that the ROC’s international undertakings function to echo Kremlin objectives, policymakers should consider scrutinizing church activities and interactions with civil society and government interlocutors, with an eye toward identifying and minimizing opportunities for Kremlin influence and interference.

This policy brief was written as part of the …

Addressing Interstate Ground Water Ownership: Mississippi V. Tennessee, Alec Sweet

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

Contemporaneous with significant climate change and heightened environmental concerns, the Supreme Court has seen an increasing number of water-related lawsuits between states. These lawsuits include disputes over water storage and water compacts as well as disputes over water usage affecting aquaculture. Scientists predict that in the future, the United States could face rising temperatures, droughts, and natural disasters. If states cannot cooperate to conserve the water they share, these catastrophes could cause immense suffering and numerous conflicts between states. The Supreme Court needs a consistent doctrine to apply in water disputes.

In prior disputes over surface water, the Court has …

Navassa: Property, Sovereignty, And The Law Of The Territories, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The United States acquired its first overseas territory—Navassa Island, near Haiti—by conceptualizing it as a kind of property to be owned, rather than a piece of sovereign territory to be governed. The story of Navassa shows how competing conceptions of property and sovereignty are an important and underappreciated part of the law of the territories—a story that continued fifty years later in the Insular Cases, which described Puerto Rico as “belonging to” but not “part of” the United States.

Contemporary scholars are drawn to the sovereignty framework and the public-law tools that come along with it: arguments about rights and …

Grotian Moments And Statehood, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Grotian Moments are instances of accelerated formation of customary law, sparked by significant world events, such as wars, terrorist attacks, or natural catastrophes. This Article applies the Grotian Moment theory to the legal criteria of statehood, in an attempt to assess whether an evolution in specific elements of statehood has resulted in such paradigm-shifting Grotian Moments. In Part II, this Article analyzes the Grotian Moment theory while distinguishing it from other types of customary law formation. Part III focuses on the legal theory of statehood and each of its constitutive elements. Part IV discusses whether any such elements of statehood …

State Responsibility For International Bail-Jumping, Robert Currie, Elizabeth Matheson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Over the last decade, there has been a spate of incidents in Canada and the United States involving Saudi Arabian nationals who, while out on bail for predominantly sexual crimes, were able to abscond from the countries despite having surrendered their passports. Investigation has revealed evidence supporting a reasonable inference that the government of Saudi Arabia has, in fact, assisted its nationals to escape on these occasions. This article makes the case that this kind of conduct amounts not just to unfriendly acts but also to infringements upon the territorial sovereignty of both states and serious breaches of the international …

Russia’S 2020 Constitutional Amendments And The Entrenchment Of The Moscow Patriarchate As A Lever Of Foreign Policy Soft Power, Robert C. Blitt

Scholarly Works

Much has been written about the Kremlin’s embrace of the Russian Orthodox Church—Moscow Patriarchate (ROC) as a lever of soft power for advancing Russia’s foreign policy. Based on the substance of the constitutional amendments ratified in July 2020, this chapter reasons that the church-state partnership is poised to grow stronger and more entrenched in the coming years.

After briefly highlighting the energizing effect several key constitutional amendments are likely to have on existing Kremlin foreign policy objectives, this chapter offers an assessment of the ROC’s central role in disseminating and advocating these newly minted constitutional norms across its international platforms …