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Transnational Law Commons

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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Transnational Law

Catch And Kill Jurisdiction, Zachary D. Clopton Nov 2022

Catch And Kill Jurisdiction, Zachary D. Clopton

Michigan Law Review

In catch and kill journalism, a tabloid buys a story that could be published elsewhere and then deliberately declines to publish it. In catch and kill jurisdiction, a federal court assumes jurisdiction over a case that could be litigated in state court and then declines to hear the merits through a nonmerits dismissal. Catch and kill journalism undermines the free flow of information. Catch and kill jurisdiction undermines the enforcement of substantive rights. And, importantly, because catch and kill jurisdiction relies on jurisdictional and procedural law, it is often able to achieve ends that would be politically unpalatable by other …


Federal Rule 44.1: Foreign Law In U.S. Courts Today, Vivian Grosswald Curran Nov 2020

Federal Rule 44.1: Foreign Law In U.S. Courts Today, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

This article presents an in-depth analysis of the latent methodological issues that are as much a cause of U.S. federal court avoidance of foreign law as are judicial difficulties in obtaining foreign legal materials and difficulties in understanding foreign legal orders and languages. It explores Rule 44.1’s inadvertent introduction of a civil-law method into a common-law framework, and the results that have ensued, including an incomplete transition of foreign law from being an issue of fact to becoming an issue of law. It addresses the ways in which courts obtain information about foreign law today, suggesting among others the methodological …


Facilitating Money Judgment Enforcement Between Canada And The United States, Paul George Nov 2020

Facilitating Money Judgment Enforcement Between Canada And The United States, Paul George

Faculty Scholarship

The United States has attempted for years to create a more efficient enforcement regime for foreign-country judgments, both by treaty and statute. Long negotiations succeeded in July 2019, when the Hague Conference on Private International Law (with U.S. participants, including the Uniform Law Commission) promulgated the new Hague Judgments Convention which harmonizes judgment recognition standards but leaves the domestication process to the enforcing jurisdiction. In August 2019, the Uniform Law Commission took a significant step to fill that gap, though limited to Canadian judgments. The Uniform Registration of Canadian Money Judgments Act provides a registration process similar to that for …


The Circulation Of Judgments Under The Draft Hague Judgments Convention, Ronald A. Brand Jan 2019

The Circulation Of Judgments Under The Draft Hague Judgments Convention, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The 2018 draft of a Hague Judgments Convention adopts a framework based largely on what some have referred to as “jurisdictional filters.” Article 5(1) provides a list of thirteen authorized bases of indirect jurisdiction by which a foreign judgment is first tested. If one of these jurisdictional filters is satisfied, the resulting judgment is presumptively entitled to circulate under the convention, subject to a set of grounds for non-recognition that generally are consistent with existing practice in most legal systems. This basic architecture of the Convention has been assumed to be set from the start of the Special Commission process, …


Retiring Forum Non Conveniens, Maggie Gardner Nov 2017

Retiring Forum Non Conveniens, Maggie Gardner

Maggie Gardner

When it comes to transnational litigation in the federal courts, it is time to retire the doctrine of forum non conveniens. The doctrine, which allows judges to decline jurisdiction in cases they believe would be better heard in foreign courts, is meant to promote international comity and protect defendant fairness. But it is not well-designed for the former purpose, and given recent developments at the Supreme Court, it is dangerously redundant when it comes to the latter. This Article seeks to demythologize forum non conveniens, to question its continuing relevance, and to encourage the courts and Congress to narrow its …


Rjr Nabisco And The Runaway Canon, Maggie Gardner Aug 2017

Rjr Nabisco And The Runaway Canon, Maggie Gardner

Maggie Gardner

In last Term’s RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, the Court finished transforming the presumption against extraterritoriality from a tool meant to effectuate congressional intent into a tool for keeping Congress in check. In the hands of the RJR Nabisco majority, the presumption has become less a method for interpreting statutes than a pronouncement on the proper scope of access to U.S. courts, a pronouncement that Congress must labor to displace. Besides the worrisome implications for separation of powers, the majority’s opinion was also disappointing on practical grounds. By applying the presumption too aggressively, the Court missed an opportunity to …


Retiring Forum Non Conveniens, Maggie Gardner May 2017

Retiring Forum Non Conveniens, Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When it comes to transnational litigation in the federal courts, it is time to retire the doctrine of forum non conveniens. The doctrine, which allows judges to decline jurisdiction in cases they believe would be better heard in foreign courts, is meant to promote international comity and protect defendant fairness. But it is not well-designed for the former purpose, and given recent developments at the Supreme Court, it is dangerously redundant when it comes to the latter. This Article seeks to demythologize forum non conveniens, to question its continuing relevance, and to encourage the courts and Congress to narrow its …


Whose Law Of Personal Jurisdiction? The Choice Of Law Problem In The Recognition Of Foreign Judgements, Tanya Monestier Oct 2016

Whose Law Of Personal Jurisdiction? The Choice Of Law Problem In The Recognition Of Foreign Judgements, Tanya Monestier

Law Faculty Scholarship

It is black-letter law that in order to recognize and enforce a foreign judgment, the rendering court must have had personal jurisdiction over the defendant. While the principle is clear, it is an open question as to whose law governs the question of personal jurisdiction: that of the rendering court or that of the recognizing court. In other words, is the foreign court's jurisdiction over the defendant governed by foreign law (the law of F1), domestic law (the law of F2), or some combination thereof? While courts have taken a number of different approaches, it seems that many courts regard …


Rjr Nabisco And The Runaway Canon, Maggie Gardner Oct 2016

Rjr Nabisco And The Runaway Canon, Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In last Term’s RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, the Court finished transforming the presumption against extraterritoriality from a tool meant to effectuate congressional intent into a tool for keeping Congress in check. In the hands of the RJR Nabisco majority, the presumption has become less a method for interpreting statutes than a pronouncement on the proper scope of access to U.S. courts, a pronouncement that Congress must labor to displace. Besides the worrisome implications for separation of powers, the majority’s opinion was also disappointing on practical grounds. By applying the presumption too aggressively, the Court missed an opportunity to …


State Court International Human Rights Litigation: A Concerning Trend?, Austen L. Parrish Jan 2013

State Court International Human Rights Litigation: A Concerning Trend?, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The brief symposium contribution explores human rights litigation in U.S. state courts under state law. Faced with higher hurdles to successfully asserting Alien Tort Statute claims in U.S. courts and reluctant to re-embrace more traditional international lawmaking, human rights advocates have begun to experiment with alternative strategies for redressing human rights violations. One strategy involves state court litigation. Some commentators believe that state courts may prove more amenable to enforcing and advancing human rights. This symposium contribution explores the parallels between the recent willingness to consider state court litigation to remedy human rights violations occurring abroad and other state court …


Evading Legislative Jurisdiction, Austen L. Parrish Jan 2012

Evading Legislative Jurisdiction, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the last few years, and mostly unnoticed, courts have adopted a radically different approach to issues of legislative jurisdiction. Instead of grappling with the difficult question of whether Congress intended a law to reach beyond U.S. borders, courts have side-stepped it entirely. Courts have done so by redefining the definition of extraterritoriality. Significant and contentious decisions in the Ninth and D.C. Circuits paved the way by holding that not all regulation of overseas foreign conduct is extraterritorial. And then suddenly, last term, the U.S. Supreme Court breathed life into the practice. In its landmark Morrison v. National Australia Bank …