Jurisdiction Commons^™

Investment Dispute Resolution Under The Transpacific Partnership Agreement: Prelude To A Slippery Slope?, Leon E. Trakman Professor

Leon E Trakman Dean

Intense debate is currently brewing over the multistate negotiation of the Transpacific Partnership Agreement [TPPA], led by the United States. The TPPA will be the largest trade and investment agreement after the European Union, with trillions of investment dollars at stake. However, there is little understanding of the complex issues involved in regulating inbound and outbound investment. The negotiating of the TPPA is shrouded in both mystery and dissension among negotiating countries. NGOs, investor and legal interest groups heatedly debate how the TPPA ought to regulate international investment. However this dissension is resolved, it will have enormous economic, political and …

The Debtor Class, Kara J. Bruce

Kara J. Bruce

In recent years, individuals seeking bankruptcy protection have encountered an unexpected harm: their lenders have misrepresented the amounts they owe, lost or misapplied their loan payments, and violated clear requirements of bankruptcy law and procedure. Recent investigations of consumer bankruptcy cases reveal widespread abuse of the bankruptcy code, ranging from the filing of unsupported or overinflated proofs of claim to violations of the automatic stay and discharge injunction. Such practices undermine consumer bankruptcy’s central goals to provide consumer debtors a fresh financial start and to achieve the fair treatment of and distribution of assets to creditors. Because many debtors affected …

Ending Judgment Arbitrage: Jurisdictional Competition And The Enforcement Of Foreign Money Judgments In The United States, Gregory Shill

Gregory Shill

Recent multi-billion-dollar damage awards issued by foreign courts against large American companies have focused attention on the once-obscure, patchwork system of enforcing foreign-country judgments in the United States. That system’s structural problems are even more serious than its critics have charged. However, the leading proposals for reform overlook the positive potential embedded in its design.

In the United States, no treaty or federal law controls the domestication of foreign judgments; the process is instead governed by state law. Although they are often conflated in practice, the procedure consists of two formally and conceptually distinct stages: foreign judgments must first be …