Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Increasing Compliance With International Pandemic Law: International Relations And New Global Health Agreements, Matthew M. Kavanagh, Clare Wenham, Elize Massard Da Fonseca, Laurence R. Helfer, Elvin Nyukuri, Allan Maleche, Sam F. Halabi, Adi Radhakrishnan, Attiya Waris

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

King Leopold's Bonds And The Odious Debts Mystery, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati, Kim Oosterlinck

Faculty Scholarship

In 1898, in the wake of the Spanish-American war, Spain ceded the colony of Cuba to the United States. In keeping with the law of state succession, the Spanish demanded that the U.S. also take on Spanish debts that had been backed by Cuban revenues. The Americans refused, arguing that some of those debts had been utilized for purposes adverse to the interests of the Cuban people. This, some argue, was the birth of the doctrine of “odious debts”; a doctrine providing that debts incurred by a non-representative government and utilized for purposes adverse to the population do not need …

Strengthening The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Pathways For Bridging Law And Policy, Columbia Law School, 2020, Nobuhisa Ishizuka, Masahiro Kurosaki, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

During the three years leading up to this year ’s 60th anniversary of the signing of the 1960 U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, a series of workshops were held under the joint sponsorship of Columbia Law School’s Center for Japanese Legal Studies and the National Defense Academy of Japan’s Center for Global Security. Bringing together experts in international law and political science primarily from the United States and Japan, the workshops examined how differing approaches to use of force and understandings of individual and collective self-defense in the two countries might adversely affect their alliance.

The workshop participants explored the underlying causes …

Theorizing The Judicialization Of International Relations, Karen J. Alter, Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This article introduces a Thematic Section and theorizes the multiple ways that judicializing international relations shifts power away from national executives and legislatures toward litigants, judges, arbitrators, and other nonstate decision-makers. We identify two preconditions for judicialization to occur—(1) delegation to an adjudicatory body charged with applying designated legal rules, and (2) legal rights-claiming by actors who bring—or threaten to bring—a complaint to one or more of these bodies. We classify the adjudicatory bodies that do and do not contribute to judicializing international relations, including but not limited to international courts. We then explain how rights-claiming initiates a process for …

Building Multilateral Anticorruption Enforcement: Analogies Between International Trade & Anti-Bribery Law, Rachel Brewster, Christine Dryden

Faculty Scholarship

In the last twenty years, the United States government has put substantial resources behind the fight against .foreign bribery by using the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to prosecute unilaterally foreign and domestic companies who engage in corruption abroad. The United States is not entirely alone in this effort, but other countries have been far less vigorous in investing resources in investigations and prosecuting cases. Because of the unilateral and extraterritorial nature of FCPA prosecutions, these cases are sometimes controversial as foreign governments resist American influence in their commercial relations.

In response to this international tension, as well as a …

Presidential Control Over International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith

Faculty Scholarship

Presidents have come to dominate the making, interpretation, and termination of international law for the United States. Often without specific congressional concurrence, and sometimes even when it is likely that Congress would disagree, the President has developed the authority to:

(a) make a vast array of international obligations for the United States, through both written agreements and the development of customary international law;

(b) make increasingly consequential political commitments for the United States on practically any topic;

(c) interpret these obligations and commitments; and

(d) terminate or withdraw from these obligations and commitments.

While others have examined pieces of this …

Maduro Bonds, G. Mitu Gulati, Ugo Panizza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Local Liability In International Economic Law, Timothy Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Enforcing The Fcpa: International Resonance And Domestic Strategy, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), which bans corporations from offering bribes to foreign government officials, was enacted during the Watergate era’s crackdown on political corruption but remained only weakly enforced for its first two decades. American industry argued that the law created an uneven playing field in global commerce, which made robust enforcement politically unpopular. This Article documents how the executive branch strategically under- enforced the FCPA, while Congress and the President pushed for an international agreement that would bind other countries to rules similar to those of the United States. The Article establishes that U.S. officials ramped up …

Can Greece Be Expelled From The Eurozone? Toward A Default Rule On Expulsion From International Organizations, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

The ongoing European crisis has raised uncomfortable questions about the conditions under which treaty-based unions of nations like the EU or the EMU can legally expel a member—Greece being the most obvious candidate. The EU, for example, has rules governing the voluntary withdrawal of members, but says nothing about whether a member can be expelled. As a matter of international law, what does the silence mean? Put differently: What is the default rule regarding expulsions when a treaty says nothing about forced withdrawals? Is there an absolute bar on expulsion, as some have suggested? Conversely, is there an implicit right …

Presidential War Powers As A Two-Level Dynamic: International Law, Domestic Law, And Practice-Based Legal Change, Curtis A. Bradley, Jean Galbraith

Faculty Scholarship

There is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the United Nations Charter or specific Security Council resolutions authorize nations to use force abroad, and there is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the U.S. Constitution and statutory law allows the President to use force abroad. These are largely separate areas of scholarship, addressing what are generally perceived to be two distinct levels of legal doctrine. This Article, by contrast, considers these two levels of doctrine together as they relate to the United States. In doing so, it makes three main contributions. First, it demonstrates striking parallels …

Does Brexit Spell The Death Of Transnational Law?, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The British leave vote in the referendum on EU membership has important implications for how we think about law . The vote must be viewed as a manifestation of a globalized nationalism that we find in many EU member states and many other countries. As such, it is also a challenge of the idea of transnational law, forcefully introduced in Jessup’s book on Transnational law 60 years ago. In this paper, I suggest that the hope to return from transnational law to the nation state of the 19th century is nostalgic and futile. However, I argue that transnational law has …

The Supreme Court As A Filter Between International Law And American Constitutionalism, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

As part of a symposium on Justice Stephen Breyer’s book, “The Court and the World,” this essay describes and defends the Supreme Court’s role as a filter between international law and the American constitutional system. In this role, the Court ensures that when international law passes into the U.S. legal system, it does so in a manner consistent with domestic constitutional values. This filtering role is appropriate, the Essay explains, in light of the different processes used to generate international law and domestic law and the different functions served by these bodies of law. The Essay provides examples of this …

Towards A New International Law Of The Atmosphere?, Peter H. Sand, Jonathan B. Wiener

Faculty Scholarship

Inclusion of the topic ‘protection of the atmosphere’ in the current work programme of the UN International Law Commission (ILC) reflects the long overdue recognition of the fact that the scope of contemporary international law for the Earth’s atmosphere extends far beyond the traditional discipline of ‘air law’ as a synonym for airspace and air navigation law. Instead, the atmospheric commons are regulated by a ‘regime complex’ comprising a multitude of economic uses including global communications, pollutant emissions and diffusion, in different geographical sectors and vertical zones, in the face of different categories of risks, and addressed by a wide …

Competing For Refugees: A Market-Based Solution To A Humanitarian Crisis, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The current refugee crisis demands novel legal solutions, and new ways of summoning the political will to implement them. As a matter of national incentives, the goal must be to design mechanisms that discourage countries of origin from creating refugees, and encourage host countries to welcome them. One way to achieve this would be to recognize that persecuted refugee groups have a financial claim against their countries of origin, and that this claim can be traded to host nations in exchange for acceptance. Modifications to the international apparatus would be necessary, but the basic legal elements of this proposal already …

Differentiating Among International Investment Disputes, Julie A. Maupin

Faculty Scholarship

Can investor-state arbitration tribunals, which exercise jurisdiction over limited claims involving discrete parties, render awards that deliver individualized justice while also promoting systemic fairness, predictability and coherence? The answer, I argue, is a qualified yes – provided that the methods employed are tailored to the particular characteristics of each dispute. Using three well-known investment arbitrations as case studies, I illustrate that investor-state disputes vary widely in terms of their socio-legal, territorial, and political impacts. Significant variances along these three dimensions call for a differentiated approach to investor-state dispute resolution. I outline what such an approach might look like and analyze …

Supplying Compliance: Why And When The United States Complies With Wto Rulings, Rachel Brewster, Adam Chilton

Faculty Scholarship

In studies of compliance with international law, the focus is usually on the “demand side” – that is, how to increase the pressure on the state to comply. Less attention has been paid, however, to the consequences of the “supply side” – who within the state is responsible for the compliance. This Article is the first study to systematically address the issue of how different actors within the United States government alter national policy in response to the violations of international law. The Article does so by examining cases initiated under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). …

Treaty Termination And Historical Gloss, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

The termination of U.S. treaties provides an especially rich example of how governmental practices can provide a “gloss” on the Constitution’s separation of powers. The authority to terminate treaties is not addressed specifically in the constitutional text and instead has been worked out over time through political-branch practice. This practice, moreover, has developed largely without judicial review. Despite these features, Congress and the President—and the lawyers who advise them—have generally treated this issue as a matter of constitutional law rather than merely political happenstance. Importantly, the example of treaty termination illustrates not only how historical practice can inform constitutional understandings …

Beyond One Voice, David H. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

The one-voice doctrine, a mainstay of U.S. foreign relations jurisprudence, maintains that in its external relations the United States must be able to speak with one voice. The doctrine has been used to answer critical questions about the foreign affairs powers of the President, Congress, the courts, and U.S. states. Notwithstanding its prominence, the one-voice doctrine has received relatively little sustained attention. This Article offers the first comprehensive assessment of the doctrine. The assessment proves fatal.

Despite broad use and value in certain contexts, the one-voice doctrine is fundamentally flawed. The doctrine not only is used to address divergent questions …

All The Missing Souls: A Personal History Of The War Crimes Tribunals By David Sheffer, Jennifer Laws

Faculty Scholarship

David Scheffer’s memoir records his firsthand experiences as the primary U.S. representative in the processes of building five war crimes tribunals between 1993 and 2006: the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia, and the International Criminal Court. This review analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of his work and makes recommendations to libraries regarding selection for their collections.

Pricing Compliance: When Formal Remedies Displace Reputational Sanctions, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom in international law is that dispute resolution institutions sharpen the reputational costs to states. This article challenges this understanding by examining how the inclusion of dispute resolution tribunals and remedy regimes can alter reputational analysis by shifting the audience¹s understanding of how mandatory a treaty's substantive obligations are. Drawing on the distinction between prices and sanctions, this article contests the assumption that the introduction of a remedy regime in international agreements will regularly increase compliance with the treaty¹s substantive terms. Instead, some remedy regimes may 'price' deviations from the treaty¹s terms and thereby facilitate breaches of the …

Where Should Europe’S Investment Path Lead?: Reflections On August Reinisch, “Quo Vadis Europe?”, Julie A. Maupin

Faculty Scholarship

Relative to the past policies of its Member States, will the European Union’s new comprehensive international investment policy constitute a step forward, a step backward, or a perpetuation of the status quo? Professor Reinisch’s contribution to this volume opens a wide window on the current state of the debate. His cogent analysis suggests that, at present, all three possibilities remain live ones, although some basic contours of a likely trajectory are beginning to take shape. I use his musings as a springboard to investigate two questions which follow naturally from his. That is, in view of Professor Reinisch’s response to …

Transparency In International Investment Law: The Good, The Bad, And The Murky, Julie A. Maupin

Faculty Scholarship

How transparent is the international investment law regime, and how transparent should it be? Most studies approach these questions from one of two competing premises. One camp maintains that the existing regime is opaque and should be made completely transparent; the other finds the regime sufficiently transparent and worries that any further transparency reforms would undermine the regime’s essential functioning. This paper explores the tenability of these two positions by plumbing the precise contours of transparency as an overarching norm within international investment law. After defining transparency in a manner befitting the decentralized nature of the regime, the paper identifies …

Revisiting Sovereign Bankruptcy, Lee C. Buchheit, Anna Gelpern, Mitu Gulati, Ugo Panizza, Beatrice Weder Di Mauro, Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Faculty Scholarship

Sovereign debt crises occur regularly and often violently. Yet there is no legally and politically recognized procedure for restructuring the debt of bankrupt sovereigns. Procedures of this type have been periodically debated, but so far been rejected, for two main reasons. First, countries have been reluctant to give up power to supranational rules or institutions, and creditors and debtors have felt that there were sufficient instruments for addressing debt crises at hoc. Second, fears that making debt easier to restructure would raise the costs and reduce the amounts of sovereign borrowing in many countries. This was perceived to be against …

Globalization And Law: Law Beyond The State, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The chapter provides an introduction into law and globalization for sociolegal studies. Instead of treating globalization as an external factor that impacts the law, globalization and law are here viewed as intertwined. I suggest that three types of globalization should be distinguished—globalization as empirical phenomenon, globalization as theory, and globalization as ideology. I go on to discuss one central theme of globalization, namely in what way society, and therefore law, move beyond the state. This is done along the three classical elements of the state—territory, population/citizenship, and government. The role of all of these elements is shifting, suggesting we need …

Qui Tam: Is False Claims Law A Model For International Law?, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sovereign Wealth Funds And Global Finance, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter focuses on a number of specific sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) whose portfolios indicate strong interests in finance both in their home countries and abroad. It first reviews empirical evidence that shows SWFs having been major investors in Western financial intermediaries for decades. It then considers the organization and governance of SWFs, with particular emphasis on the three main schools of thought as well as the predictions one can derive from them vis-à-vis the behavior of individual actors in the global financial network: economic theories, economic sociology, and political economy. It also presents case studies that “test” these theories …

Do U.S. Courts Discriminate Against Treaties?: Equivalence, Duality, And Treaty Non-Self-Execution, David H. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The President's Unconstitutional Treatymaking, David H. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

The President of the United States frequently signs international agreements but postpones ratification pending Senate consent. Under international law, a state that signs a treaty subject to later ratification must avoid acts that would defeat the treaty's object and purpose until the nation clearly communicates its intent not to join. As a result, the President in signing assumes interim treaty obligations before the treatymaking process is complete. Despite the pervasiveness of this practice, scholars have neglected the question of its constitutionality. As this Article demonstrates, the practice is unconstitutional. Neither the text, structure, nor history of the Constitution supports the …

Sexual Rights And State Governance, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

We sit at an interesting juncture in the evolution (in some cases, devolution) of the idea of sexual rights in international law. For at the very moment that we are experiencing a retraction in both domestic and international commitments to rights associated with sexual and reproductive health, we see sexual rights of a less-reproductive nature gaining greater uptake and acceptance. It is the moral hazard associated with perceived gains in the domain of international rights for lesbians and gay men that I want to address today. In the end, the point I want to bring home is that a particular …