Law Commons^™

Authoritarian Privacy, Mark Jia

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Privacy laws are traditionally associated with democracy. Yet autocracies increasingly have them. Why do governments that repress their citizens also protect their privacy? This Article answers this question through a study of China. China is a leading autocracy and the architect of a massive surveillance state. But China is also a major player in data protection, having enacted and enforced a number of laws on information privacy. To explain how this came to be, the Article first turns to several top-down objectives often said to motivate China’s privacy laws: advancing its digital economy, expanding its global influence, and protecting its …

The Overlooked Communities Of Forced Displacement In The United States: Humanizing The Relocation Of Indigenous Tribes In The Face Of Climate Change, Jennifer O'Rourke

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Evolving Sovereignty Relationships Between Affiliated Jurisdictions: Lessons For Native American Jurisdictions, Vaughan Carter, Charlotte Ku, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

Though sovereignty is principally associated with governance over a territory and freedom to act in the international arena, this article examines sovereignty as empowerment. The study tests the applicability to Native American jurisdictions of the experiences of fifteen case study jurisdictions presently associated with the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France in shared sovereign relationships. The focus is on the evolution of those relationships and opportunities for development where jurisdictions do not attain full control over their affairs. The case studies examine the relationships from the perspectives of political, economic, and cultural sovereignty. The article further examines the relationships in …

Common But Differentiated Constitutionalisms: Does ‘Environmental Constitutionalism’ Offer Realistic Policy Options For Improving Un Environmental Law And Governance? Us And Latin American Perspectives, Erin Daly, Maria Antonia Tigre, Natalia Urzola

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Environmental law and governance have taken many different forms in the Americas in response to climate change mitigation. This contribution describes recent developments in the United States, Colombia, and Brazil, illustrating the divergent approaches to climate protection. The chapter highlights the common but differentiated ways in which the three countries in the Americas approach environment constitutionalism in the midst of the climate crisis. On one hand, Brazil and Colombia adopt a rights-based approach to tackle complex issues related to environmental law and governance in their context-specific responses to climate protection. In particular, the courts of Colombia and Brazil have been …

Ai-Based Evidence In Criminal Trials?, Sabine Gless, Fredric I. Lederer, Thomas Weigend

Faculty Publications

Smart devices are increasingly the origin of critical criminal case data. The importance of such data, especially data generated when using modern automobiles, is likely to become even more important as increasingly complex methods of machine learning lead to AI-based evidence being autonomously generated by devices. This article reviews the admissibility of such evidence from both American and German perspectives. As a result of this comparative approach, the authors conclude that American evidence law could be improved by borrowing aspects of the expert testimony approaches used in Germany’s “inquisitorial” court system.

Desettling Fixation, Emily T. Behzadi Cárdenas

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have long contemplated how the effects of colonialism have permeated even race “neutral” laws. This Article scrutinizes the ways Eurocentric copyright systems have failed to protect, and have even encouraged, the unauthorized uses of indigenous heritage in derivative subject matter, exposing how settler colonialism in copyright law has entrenched an unequal hierarchy among communities seeking copyright protection. Due to its ephemeral nature, intangible cultural heritage constantly faces the threat of exploitation by dominant cultures. The intangible heritage of indigenous groups has been particularly vulnerable to illicit and uncompensated commodification. Intangible heritage, such as oral histories and traditional dances, is …

Review Essay: Marta Cartabia And Nicola Lupo, “The Constitution Of Italy: A Contextual Analysis” (2023), Francesca Bignami

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this review essay, I showcase aspects of Marta Cartabia’s and Nicola Lupo’s The Constitution of Italy that set it apart from standard texts and that make it an excellent resource on Italian government and public law. Then, I focus on two elements of the Italian constitutional order that are discussed in the book and that are unique when seen in comparative context—the non-hierarchical organization of the Italian judiciary and the salience of social rights. I argue that future research on these aspects of the Italian case could make an important contribution to cutting-edge debates in the field of comparative …

Extraterritoriality, Francesca Bignami, Giorgio Resta

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This chapter argues that the competing American ballot-box and European fundamental rights paradigms of regulatory law have marked the specific domain of digital regulation. These regulatory paradigms and their associated state interests are projected extraterritorially through the market power of Silicon Valley, on the one hand, and the privacy rights of European Union (EU) regulators, on the other hand. This chapter also analyzes recent developments in the EU, where there is now a state effort to make digital markets and, relatedly, an emerging preference for some data localization to promote both fundamental rights and economic and security interests. In China, …

Restating The Civil Law Of Quasi-Contract: Negotiorum Gestio And Unjust Enrichment, Nikolaos A. Davrados

Journal of Civil Law Studies

This Article restates the Louisiana civil law of negotiorum gestio and unjust enrichment, one decade after the common-law Third Restatement of Restitution and Unjust Enrichment. The Article first redefines and re-designates the term "quasi-contract" from a false source of obligations to a valid practical term describing the two separate institutions of negotiorum gestio and unjust enrichment. Based on this renewed understanding of quasi-contract, the Article proceeds to a detailed commentary on the revised Louisiana law of negotiorum gestio and unjust enrichment (which includes the special action for payment of a thing not due and the general action for enrichment without …

Climate Change In The Courts: A 2023 Retrospective, Maria Antonia Tigre, Margaret Barry

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Drawing from the jurisdictions covered in the Sabin Center's United States (U.S.) and Global Climate Litigation databases, this report offers insights into key developments, emerging themes, evolving legal strategies, and the pulse of climate litigation in 2023.

Modular Bankruptcy: Toward A Consumer Scheme Of Arrangement, John A. E. Pottow

Law & Economics Working Papers

The world of international bankruptcy has seen increasing use of the versatile scheme of arrangement, a form of corporate reorganization available under English law. A key feature of the scheme is its modularity, whereby a debtor can restructure only a single class of debt, such as bond indentures, without affecting other debt, such as trade. This is the opposite of chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code’s comprehensive reckoning of all financial stakeholders. This article considers a novel idea: could the scheme be transplanted into the consumer realm? It argues that it could and should. Substantial benefits of more individually …

Human Rights, Trans Rights, Prisoners’ Rights: An International Comparison, Tom Butcher

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In this Note, I conduct an international comparison of the state of trans prisoners’ rights to explore how different national legal contexts impact the likelihood of achieving further liberation through appeals to human rights ideals. I examine the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Argentina, and Costa Rica and show the degree to which a human rights framework has been successful thus far in advancing trans prisoners’ rights. My analysis also indicates that the degree to which a human rights framework is likely to be successful in the future varies greatly between countries. In countries that are hesitant …

Privacy And/Or Trade, Anupam Chander, Paul M. Schwartz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

International privacy and trade law developed together, but now are engaged in significant conflict. Current efforts to reconcile the two are likely to fail, and the result for globalization favors the largest international companies able to navigate the regulatory thicket. In a landmark finding, this Article shows that more than sixty countries outside the European Union are now evaluating whether foreign countries have privacy laws that are adequate to receive personal data. This core test for deciding on the permissibility of global data exchanges is currently applied in a nonuniform fashion with ominous results for the data flows that power …

Global Issues In A Globalized World: The Unescapable Dialogue Between SharīʿA And The Constitution, Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

In an increasingly globalized world, a world in flux, which is constantly subject to rapid circulation of information, change is a dimension that we all experience in our lives with ever increasing frequency. Change, be it that of customs and fashion or that of laws and systems of government, is something which now seems impossible to escape. Change is an integral part of our unstable contemporaneity.

This is not only a continuous change but also a rapid one. In such a social and political environment, at a global and local level, it is more and more difficult to find a …

Provisional Measures In Aid Of Arbitration, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The success of the New York Convention has made arbitration a preferred means of dispute resolution for international commercial transactions. Success in arbitration often depends on the extent to which a party may secure assets, evidence, or the status quo between parties prior to the completion of the arbitration process. This makes the availability of provisional measures granted by either arbitral tribunals or by courts fundamental to the arbitration. In this Article, I consider the existing legal framework for provisional measures in aid of arbitration, with particular attention to the sources of the rules providing for such measures. Those sources …

A Guide To Mireille Delmas-Marty's “Compass”, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This essay appears as the Afterword (pp. 55-64) to a volume featuring an important work by the late Mireille Delmas-Marty (1941-2022) titled A Compass of Possibilities: Global Governance and Legal Humanism. A Collège de France de Paris law professor and one of the pre-eminent legal thinkers of her generation, Delmas-Marty and the essay’s author were longtime colleagues and collaborators. The volume contains an English translation of a 2011 lecture by Delmas-Marty, originally titled “Une boussole des possibles: Gouvernance mondiale et humanismes juridiques.” Amann’s essay surveys that writing, in a manner designed to acquaint non-francophone lawyers and academics with Delmas-Marty’s …

Human Rights And Climate Change For Climate Litigation In Brazil And Beyond: An Analysis Of The Climate Fund Decision, Maria Antonia Tigre, Joana Setzer

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In 2022, the Brazilian Supreme Court announced a groundbreaking decision in the Climate Fund case. The decision, rendered amidst a challenging political climate, acknowledges the significance of the Paris Agreement within the country’s legal framework. The Court’s ruling established that the executive branch has a constitutional obligation to allocate funds from the Climate Fund for climate change mitigation and adaptation, grounded in the constitutional right to a healthy environment, international rights and commitments, and the principle of separation of powers.

Notably, the Court recognized the Paris Agreement as a human rights treaty, granting it “supranational” status. The implications of the …

Non-Extraterritoriality, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The extraterritorial application of statutes has received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent years, but very little attention has been paid the non-extraterritoriality of statutes, by which I mean their effect on cases beyond their specified territorial reach. The question matters when a choice-of-law rule or a contractual choice-of-law clause directs application of a state’s law and the state has a statute that, because of a provision limiting its external reach, does not reach the case. On one view, the state has no law for cases beyond the reach of the statute. The territorial limitation is a choice-of-law …

Status Quo Kewenangan Perusahaan Asuransi Dalam Menerbitkan Produk Penjaminan Pasca Berlaku Efektifnya Undang-Undang No. 1 Tahun 2016 Tentang Penjaminan, Kalih Krisnareindra

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

Risk is something that is always exist in various type of business. Risk management commonly used the assistance of insurance companies to manage its risk by risk transfer. The current prevailing law allows the insurance industry to develop its products wider than the explicitly defined business lines in the regulation. Historically, the guarantee/surety business has been marketed jointly between insurance companies and guarantee/surety companies. This can be traced through laws and regulations that provide the authority to both type of companies to issue guarantee/surety products. But with the enactment of Law No. 1 of 2016 concerning Guarantees, there is an …

Strata Plan Cancellations In Australasia: A Comparative Analysis Of Nine Jurisdictions, Seng Wei, Edward Ti

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A growing number of Australasian jurisdictions now permit a supermajority of owners to terminate a co-owned building scheme allowing proprietors to redevelop, or more commonly, sell the underlying land. This planning tool aids municipal rejuvenation, prevents urban sprawl and provides new housing. In this paper, I examine the provisions pertaining to cancellation of unit plans under nine jurisdictions – New Zealand and all eight jurisdictions in Australia. This comparative analysis highlights several unique aspects of the Unit Title Act 2010 (NZ) such as the way its voting thresholds are calculated and the idiosyncratic application of the ‘just and equitable’ standard …

Deregulation And The Lawyers' Cartel, Nuno Garoupa, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

At one time, the legal profession largely regulated itself. However, based on the economic notion that increased competition would benefit consumers, jurisdictions have deregulated their legal markets by easing rules relating to attorney advertising, fees, and, most recently, nonlawyer ownership of law firms. Yet, despite reformers’ high expectations, legal markets today resemble those of previous decades, and most legal services continue to be delivered by traditional law firms. How to account for this seeming inertia?

We argue that the competition paradigm is theoretically flawed because it fails to fully account for market failures relating to asymmetric information, imperfect information, and …

A Hague Parallel Proceedings Convention: Architecture And Features, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In Paul Herrup and Ronald A. Brand, A Hague Convention on Parallel Proceedings, 63 Harvard International Law Journal Online 1(2022), available at https://harvardilj.org/2022/02/a-hague-convention-on-parallel-proceedings/ and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3894502, we argued that the Hague Conference on Private International Law should not undertake a project to require or prohibit exercise of original jurisdiction in national courts. Rather, the goal of current efforts should be to improve the concentration of parallel litigation in a “better forum,” in order to achieve efficient and complete resolution of disputes in transnational litigation. The Hague Conference is now taking this path. As the Experts Group and Working Group …

Designing Responsive Legal Systems: A Comparative Study, Nofit Amir, Michal Alberstein

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The drive for efficiency has caused many legal systems to redesign themselves, creating multiple paths for dispute resolution and incorporating settlement-promoting tools into the judicial role. However, as this study shows, legal systems have taken divergent approaches as they redesign themselves to accommodate settlement practices, leading to widely disparate results. This study probes the paths taken by three countries’ legal systems—England and Wales (common law), Israel (mixed), and Italy (continental law)—drawing on court docket analyses, courtroom observations, and interviews with judges in the three legal systems. It uncovers central points of divergence—emphasized stage of dispute resolution, separation vs. combination of …

A Comparative Approach Of The Development And Impact Of Victims’ Rights On Violence Against Women In The United States, Portugal, And Pakistan, Brianna Williams

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

In recent years, victims’ rights have received worldwide attention in regards to women’s rights and opportunities-or lack thereof. However, what are victims’ rights, how are women’s issues addressed under these rights, have they had their intended effect, are they adequately addressing modern issues, how have similar rights been implemented in other counties and are they working better? This article is a comparative law project between the United States, Portugal, and Pakistan evaluating victims’ rights in each country and any correlation between the presence and enforcement of victims’ rights and the impact they have had on violent crimes against women. By …

Implementing A Presumption Against Imprisonment: How Scandinavian Sentencing Policies Could Be The Key To Ending Mass Incarceration In The United States, Cydney Carter

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

With the largest prison population in the world, the United States relies on incarceration more than most when it comes to sanctioning criminal offenders, but there must be another way. This paper will examine the sentencing policies and practices in the United States, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway. It will also compare these sentencing policies and their impact on incarceration rates suggest ways in which the Scandinavian sentencing practices could influence changes to the current Federal Sentencing Guidelines in order to combat mass incarceration in the United States.

American Public Health Federalism And The Response To The Covid-19 Pandemic, Nicole Huberfeld, Sarah Gordon, David K. Jones

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter is part of an edited volume studying and comparing federalist government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter first briefly provides an overview of the American public health emergency framework and highlights key leadership challenges that occurred at federal and state levels throughout the first year of the pandemic. Then the chapter examines decentralized responsibility in American social programs and states’ prior policy choices to understand how long-term choices affected short-term emergency response. Finally, the chapter explores long-term ramifications and solutions to the governance difficulties the pandemic has highlighted.

Comparative Cybersecurity Law In Socialist Asia, Ngoc S. Bui, Jyh-An Lee

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article is a comparative study of the cybersecurity laws adopted in China and Vietnam in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The two laws both converge and diverge. Their convergences include the stringent regulation of banned acts, network operators, critical infrastructure, data localization, and personal data. These are all shaped by the immediate diffusion of China's Cybersecurity Law in Vietnam and broader structural factors: namely, the common features of the socialist state, socialist legality, and the statist approach to human rights. The foundational divergence is between the Chinese notion of cybersecurity sovereignty and the Vietnamese notion of national cyberspace, which is …

A Reader’S Guide To Legal Orientalism, Teemu Ruskola

All Faculty Scholarship

My book Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law (Harvard University Press 2013) was published in translation in China in 2016. This essay analyzes the Chinese reception of this book. Originally addressed to a North American readership, Legal Orientalism examines critically the asymmetric relationship in which Euro-American law and Chinese law stand to one another, the former regarding itself as an embodiment of universal values while viewing the latter’s as culturally particular ones. The essay explores what happens when a “Western” work of self-criticism is transmitted to an “Eastern” audience. In this context, it analyzes the politics of …

L’Utilité Du Droit Comparé (The Utility Of Comparative Law), Vivian Grosswald Curran

Book Chapters

French Abstract: Cette contribution était le discours d’ouverture à la Conférence des 100 ans de l’Institut Édouard Lambert à l’Université de Lyon. Elle discute de l’utilité du droit comparé dans le monde actuel d’une perspective technique dans le cadre d’une situation aux États-Unis et d’une perspective plus politique dans le cadre d’un arrêt de la CJUE.

English Abstract: This essay was delivered as a keynote address to the conference to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Institut Édouard Lambert at the University of Lyon. It argues for the usefulness of comparative law in today’s world from a technical angle in …

Why Judges Can't Save Democracy, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

In The Specter of Dictatorship,¹ David Driesen has written a learned, lively book about the dangers of autocracy, weaving together incisive observations about democratic backsliding in other countries with a piercing critique of American teetering on the brink of executive authoritarianism at home. Driesen draws deeply and faithfully on the extant literature on comparative constitutionalism and democracy studies. He also builds on the work of scholars of the American political system who have documented the largely one-way transfer of power over foreign affairs to the executive branch. Driesen's thesis has a slight originalist cast, holding that "the Founders aimed …