Law Commons^™

Equity Crowdfunding: All Regulated But Not Equal, Garry A. Gabison

Garry A. Gabison

This paper describes how different countries have approached equity crowdfunding. This paper focuses on countries or regulatory authorities that either expressed their awareness of the phenomenon but decided to adopt a holding pattern (monitoring and investigating) or that decided to adopt new laws and regulations. Countries like Australia have opted to reaffirm how their current set of regulations applies to crowdfunding whereas others like the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France have elected to create new exemptions in an effort to facilitate equity crowdfunding. This paper compares how each country decided to regulate the different participants in the …

Nuclear Chain Reaction: Why Economic Sanctions Are Not Worth The Public Costs, Nicholas C.W. Wolfe

Nicholas A Wolfe

International economic sanctions frequently violate human rights in targeted states and rarely achieve their objectives. However, many hail economic sanctions as an important nonviolent tool for coercing and persuading change. In November 2013, the Islamic Republic of Iran negotiated a temporary agreement with major world powers regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The United States’ media and politicians have repeatedly and incorrectly attributed Iran’s willingness to negotiate to the effectiveness of economic sanctions.

Politicians primarily focus on immediate domestic effects and enact sanctions without a thorough understanding of the long-term effects on the United States economy and the public within a targeted …

More Market-Oriented Than U.S. And More Socialist Than China: A Comparative Public Property Story Of Singapore, Jianlin Chen, Jiongzhe Cui

Jianlin Chen

Compared to the more illustrious conceptualization of private property, the conceptualiza-tion of public property remains at a surprisingly infantile stage. The very definition of public property is ambiguous. This article utilizes a comparative case study of traffic congestion policies in the United States, China, and Singapore to highlight the conceptual pitfalls posed by the current confusion on public property. This article proposes a refined public property framework that offers greater conceptual clarity on the real issues at stake. In particular, this article argues that “property” in public property should include regulatory permits while “public” in public property should not be …

Why Do Europeans Ban Hate Speech? A Debate Between Karl Loewenstein And Robert Post, Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn

European countries restrict hate speech, the United States does not. This much is clear. What explains this difference? Too often the current discussion falls back on a culturally rich but normatively vacant exceptionalism (American or otherwise) or a normatively driven convergence perspective that fails to address historical, cultural and experiential differences that distinguish countries and legal systems. Inspired by the development discourse of historical sociology, this article seeks to record instances where Americans or Europeans have argued their approach to hate speech laws was more “advanced” or “modern.”

To that end this article focuses on two authors whose writing appears …

The Anglo-American Perspective On Freezing Injunctions, Masayuki Tamaruya

Masayuki Tamaruya

Freezing injunctions are pre-trial orders to restrain a defendant from dealing with his assets so as to forestall his attempt to frustrate the potential money judgment against him. Freezing injunctions have been adopted in most common law jurisdictions as an effective civil remedy to combat attempts by recalcitrant debtors or fraudsters to frustrate potential money judgments by use of ever faster methods of fund transfer. However, in Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo SA v Alliance Bond Fund Inc, the US Supreme Court by a 5:4 judgment declared that the US District Court does not have the equitable jurisdiction to grant such …

International News V Associated Press: A Theme And Variations Over Four Days, Christopher Wadlow

Christopher Wadlow

A series of four classes at the University of Trier (Germany) for undergraduate law students, using the International News v Associated Press case 248 U.S. 215 (1918) to discuss some principles of unfair competition and copyright law, as well as some more fundamental doctrines from the common law, and American Constitutional law.