International Trade Law Commons^™

No Witness, No Case: An Assessment Of The Conduct And Quality Of Icc Investigations, Dermot Groome

Dermot M Groome

The conduct and quality of investigations pursued by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court have come under increasing scrutiny and criticism from judges on the Court. Criticism is directed at the time and length of investigations; the quality of the evidence advanced in court; the inappropriate delegation of investigative functions, and the failure to interview witnesses in a way that is consistent with the Prosecution’s obligation to conduct investigations fairly under Article 54 of the Rome Statute. This essay explores these criticisms and concludes that the judges are justified in their concerns regarding the Prosecution’s investigative …

Translating Scholarship Into Policy, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Amy C. Gaudion

Amy C. Gaudion

There is an ever widening gap between conflict resolution policy makers and scholars—a tragedy given practitioners’ dire need for new ideas to help resolve deadly conflicts and the growing knowledge researchers have to share. Research tends to swing like a pendulum between analytic and rigorous methods and accessible and relevant approaches. We reject this tradeoff. We believe that research can be simultaneously rigorous and relevant, and analytic and accessible. Given the devastating loss of life associated with armed conflict, the need for translating research results into policy prescriptions is especially strong in peacemaking. The goal of this issue of the …

From Paper To Electronic Order: The Digitalization Of The Check In The Usa*, Benjamin Geva

Benjamin Geva

No abstract provided.

International Activity And Domestic Law, Adam I. Muchmore

Adam I. Muchmore

This essay explores the ways States use their domestic laws to regulate activities that cross national borders. Domestic-law enforcement decisions play an underappreciated role in the development of international regulatory policy, particularly in situations where the enforcing State's power to apply its law extraterritorially is not contested. Collective action problems suggest there will be an undersupply of enforcement decisions that promote global welfare and an oversupply of enforcement decisions that promote national welfare. These collective action problems may be mitigated in part by government networks and other forms of regulatory cooperation.

The Limits Of Regulatory Science In Transnational Governance Of Transgenic Plant Agriculture And Food Systems, Taiwo Oriola

Taiwo Oriola

The current national and transnational regulatory and policy framework for transgenic plant agriculture and food is arguably largely defined by science. Notably, transgenic plant agriculture policy deference to science is ostensibly premised on the general perception that science is neutral, objective, reliable, and agnostic. This is exemplified by cases ranging from Alliance for Bio-integrity v Donna Shalala, European Communities: Measures Affecting the Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products, to European Commission v Republic of Poland, in which conscientious, ethical, religious, and cultural oppositional grounds to transgenic plant agriculture and food were trumped by scientific imperatives. However, the lack of unanimity …

The Prohibition On The Use Of Force For Arms Control: The Case Of Iran’S Nuclear Program, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Reyam El Molla

Mary Ellen O'Connell

International law does not permit the use of military force against Iran to attempt to end its nuclear program. The resort to military force in international relations is covered first and foremost by Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter. Article 2(4) is a general prohibition on resort to force that includes resort to military force for arms control, including nuclear weapons control. The Charter has two express but limited exceptions to the ban on military force. A state that is the victim of a significant armed attack may use force in necessary and proportional self-defense; the United Nations Security …

Chinese Reverse Mergers, Accounting Regimes, And The Rule Of Law In China, Benjamin A. Templin

Benjamin A. Templin

In 2010, federal regulators and politicians became increasingly concerned over the accounting practices of Chinese companies that trade on U.S. stock exchanges. In particular, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) targeted companies that went public through a process called the reverse merger. The instances of fraud became so widespread, regulators and commentators coined the term Chinese Reverse Merger (“CRM”) in order to describe a sector where investors assume the risk of accounting irregularities. Although CRMs must comply with international accounting standards, a weak rule of law in China has resulted in poor implementation and enforcement of its accounting regime. U.S. …

The 1937 International Sugar Agreement: Neo-Colonial Cuba And Economic Aspects Of The League Of Nations, Michael Fakhri

Michael Fakhri

To many in the West, the League of Nations was to establish political peace between nations. To the Cuban sugar-producing elite of the 1920s and 1930s, however, the League was an important socioeconomic institution used to augment many of Cuba’s first modern state institutions. This article explores how and why Cuban delegates were the principals behind the 1937 International Sugar Agreement – one of the League’s few operational economic treaties. This treaty sheds light onto how actors from the so-called industrial core and agricultural periphery used international law, institutions, and practice to negotiate and renegotiate their relationship with each other.

Imagining Territories: Space, Place, And The Anticity, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

This essay explores the concept of "Territory" in some of its cultural forms, as well as looks into cultural and linguistic conditions for territories-talk. Initially, it engages territory as a pre-political representation and explores its formal relation to space and to place. It defines territory as the paradigmatic non-place and contrasts it with the concept of the city (in fact, an anticity), especially as reflected in renaissance and early modern art/architecture, with examples from Schedel, Bellini, Breugel and others, as well as from contemporary graphic works (Moebius, Qual, Nowak).

Moving from the cultural to the political, territories are then explored …

Poisoned Milk And The Poisoning Of Democracy: Some Cautions About China Trade And Taiwan Sovereignty, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

This Paper examines some of the benefits and dangers of Taiwan's deepening economic ties to China.

In brief, the expansion of cross-Strait economic relations has benefited Taiwan economically, but may pose serious dangers to Taiwan's democratic sovereignty. China's rising Comprehensive National Power - which aims to suppress Taiwan's sovereignty and self-government - has been significantly enhanced by investment from Taiwan itself. China's trade policies are directed for political purposes, particularly for drawing the people of Taiwan into a subordinate relationship with the Chinese dictatorship.

China's strategy has already succeeded in imposing self-censorship on many Taiwanese voices, including many businesses and …

The Seller's Right To Cure A Failure To Perform In International Sales, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

The right of a defaulting party to cure a non-performance under the condition that such cure does not create any – or at least any excessive – hardship for the aggrieved party, correlated by the aggrieved party’s obligation to receive such curative performance, has emerged as the single most innovative contribution of the Uniform Commercial Code to sales law in general. However, in comparative perspective the cure doctrine is by no means universal nor uniform. This study offers a construction of the meaning of contractual cure and in particular its relation to the aggrieved party’s power to terminate the contract …

Running Backs, Wolves, And Other Fatalities: How Manipulations Of Coherence In Legal Opinions Marginalize Violent Death, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

By examining legal cases that involve violent death and its marginalization by the courts, this essay looks into the relations between narrative coherence and narrative absurd in judicial opinions. Coherence, rather than a static, unequivocal characteristic of legal narratives, is studied here as a highly manipulable narrative and rhetorical performance. Giving a performative twist to reader-response approaches I do not really ask what is the meaning of this text (as construed by its reading)? but rather, working from the position of the text's discursive community, what does this text do? The reading of these cases explores how judicial narration and …

Two Conceptions Of Relevance, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

Courts use complex modes of relevance judgments in regulating the introduction of information and construction of factual narratives; likewise, common law works both through and around relevance presuppositions in determining doctrine. This study examines different functions of relevance - conceived as different conceptions, at times competing, at times interdependent. The distinctions between these conceptions are arranged on three levels: 1) a normative/"causal" level, arguing for the status of relevance as a requirement for a "meaning-based" conception of entailment and drawing on discussions from relevance logic (RL) and modal logic; 2) a pragmatic/metapragmatic level that explores the ways in which law's …

Analogical Reasoning As Translation: The Pragmatics Of Transitivity, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

This paper attempts to examine the underlying structure of analogical reasoning in decision making. The immediate (but not exclusive) context is the form of reasoning commonly seen as prevalent in common-law judicial decision making. Following Wittgenstein and Strawson the paper identifies the problem of the contingency of transitivity of analogical relations as a serious impediment to analogical reasoning. It then proceeds to offer a method of translation that delineates the borders of contingency and analyticity of transitivity in such cases, as well as proposes how these borders may be manipulated. The theoretical insight is to treat analogical relations anaphorically, as …

What Is Contract Law 'About'? Speech Act Theory And A Critique Of 'Skeletal Promises', Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

What is contract law about? One way of looking at it is to conceive of the subject-matter of contract law in terms of promises - just as tort law arguably revolves around the concepts of accident or harm. Much like accidents - first-year law students are taught - promises are out there in the world, to be classified and distinguished so as to privilege some with legal enforceability. There is a language/world of promises, this approach seems to indicate, and a language/world of contracts. It is a main function of contract law to perform translations from the one to the …

Assessing The Early Effects Of Emerging Trade Blocs: Research Agendas For North America And Europe., Janos L. Wimpffen, Russell B. Capelle Jr, Ann M. Oberhauser, James E. Randall, Barney L. Warf

Ann Oberhauser