Foreign Law Commons^™

Unpopular Constitutionalism, Mila Versteeg

Indiana Law Journal

Constitutions are commonly thought to express nations’ highest values. They are often proclaimed in the name of “We the People” and are regarded—by scholars and the general public alike—as an expression of the people’s views and values. This Article shows empirically that this widely held image of constitutions does not correspond with the reality of constitution making around the world. The Article contrasts the constitutional-rights choices of ninety countries between 1981 and 2010 with data from nearly one-half million survey responses on cultural, religious, and social values conducted over the same period. It finds, surprisingly, that in ...

The 24th Annual Fulbright Symposium On International Legal Problems: The Effectiveness Of International Law, Sophie Clavier

Fulbright Symposium

No abstract provided.

The Civil Codes Of Libya And Syria: Hybridity, Durability, And Post-Revolution Viability In The Aftermath Of The Arab Spring, Dan E. Stigall

Dan E Stigall

The Arab Spring sent shockwaves through the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa and upended long-standing authoritarian regimes throughout the region in rapid succession. Among the many countries touched by the Arab Spring, however, Libya and Syria have been among the most profoundly impacted, experiencing institutional deficits that complicate efforts to resolve ongoing conflicts and now threaten regional stability.

The effects of such instability pose a threat to the international community, making the stabilization of these countries a matter of international concern. In order to transition from conflict to peace and sustainable development in Libya and Syria ...

Financial Innovation In East Asia, Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner, Michael Panton

Seattle University Law Review

Finance is important for development. However, the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 and the global financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the serious risks associated with financial liberalization and excessive innovation. East Asia’s strong focus on economic growth has necessitated a careful balancing of the benefits of financial liberalization and innovation against the very real risks inherent in financial sector development. This Article examines the role of regulatory, legal, and institutional infrastructure in supporting both financial development and limiting the risk of financial crises. The Article then addresses a series of issues with particular developmental significance in the region ...

The Timing And Source Of Regulation, Frank Partnoy

Seattle University Law Review

The distinction between specific concrete rules and general abstract principles has engaged legal theorists for decades. This rules–principles distinction has also become increasingly important in corporate and securities law, as well as financial market regulation. This Article adds two important variables to the rules–principles debate: timing and source. Although these two variables are relevant to legal theory generally, the specific goal here is not to address and engage the rules versus principles literature directly. Rather, the goal here is to ask whether the debate about financial market regulation might benefit from a more transparent analysis of temporal and ...

Deferred Prosecutions In The Corporate Sector: Lessons From Libor, Justin O'Brien, Olivia Dixon

Seattle University Law Review

Since 2008, the global economic downturn has significantly in-creased operating pressures on major corporations. Additionally, there has been a corresponding increase in corporate tolerance for corruption, which has coincided with a marked preference by regulators in settling, rather than litigating, enforcement actions. This Article argues that the expansion of prosecutorial authority without appropriate accountability restraints is a major tactical and strategic error. It evaluates whether the mechanism can be made subject to effective oversight. It argues that the current frame-work in the United States is highly problematic, leading to settlements that generate newspaper headlines but not necessarily cultural change. It ...

Are Defined Contribution Pension Plans Fit For Purpose In Retirement?, Jeremy R. Cooper

Seattle University Law Review

This Article considers the historical basis for the shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, the structural and practical shortcomings of defined contribution plans, alternate pension models, and adjustments to existing retirement plan models that may offer a degree of protection to plan contributors. Like the United States, Australia is now realizing the limitations of a defined contribution retirement system insofar as it relates the provision of reliable retirement income for a population with increasing life expectancy. Unlike defined contribution plans, defined benefit plans provide a benefit based typically on time served and a predetermined proportion of either ...

Enhancing The Transparency Dialogue In The “Santiago Principles” For Sovereign Wealth Funds, Adam D. Dixon

Seattle University Law Review

The financial crisis ultimately caused Western governments to welcome sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investment as a way to put a floor under collapsing markets and to provide a set of voluntary principles that would underwrite SWFs’ claim to legitimacy in the international community. In the autumn of 2007, then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund, convened the International Working Group of SWFs (IWG) to draft a set of generally accepted principles and practices. These principles are referred to as the “Santiago Principles.” The implicit objective of these twenty-four voluntary principles is to promote ...

A Study On The Safe Harbor Rules For Online File Hosting Service Providers Under Copyright Law In China, Shi Xu

Theses and Dissertations

Today both the U.S. and China are plagued with copyright infringement, particularly infringement involving online file sharing via file hosting services. The safe harbor rules in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (here after “DMCA”) §512(c) provide a certain amount of protection for contributory infringers, such as file hosting service providers, as long as certain conditions are met. Although China has borrowed extensively from DMCA §512(c) in setting up its own safe harbor rules, their content and standard of review remain unclear, leading to inconsistencies in judgments. In this circumstance, this thesis tries to analysis each ...

Stateless Income And Its Remedies, Edward D. Kleinbard

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

This outline presentation (I) quickly reviews the current status of business tax reform efforts in the United States, with particular attention to the international treatment of foreign direct investment, (II) summarizes the economic predicates required for territorial tax systems to advance economic efficiency, (III) explains why the phenomenon of stateless income means that those predicates are not met today, and are unlikely to be met in the future, and (IV) analyzes current U.S. legislative international tax proposals. In doing the last of these, the presentation points out how the legislative proposal advanced by Dave Camp, Chairman of the House ...

Mediation As The Key To The Successful Transfer Of The Case Of Jean-Bosco Uwinkindi From The Jurisdiction Of The Ictr To The Republic Of Rwanda, Taylor Friedlander

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The article discusses on the history of the Rwanda Genocide of 1994 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and different systems of justice that should be involved in prosecuting Jean Bosco Uwinkindi, the suspect of the mass killing at the Rwanda Genocide. It also mentions that three separate processes undertaken in Uwinkindi's gacaca court hearings, including truth-telling, truth-hearing, and truth-shaping.

Prostitutes, Orphans, And Entrepreneurs: The Effect Of Public Perceptions Of Ghana's Girl Child Kayayei On Public Policy, Sheryl Buske

William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law

For a variety of reasons, including the growing disparity in resources and opportunities between Ghana’s mostly rural North and its urban South, the numbers and patterns of internal migration have changed dramatically over the last twenty years. Historically the province of men, and later women on a temporary basis that was tied to the rainy seasons, young girls between ten and sixteen years of age now make up the majority of the North-South migrants.

The lives of these girl migrants, who live and work in Ghana’s markets as porters, known locally as kayayoo, are complex and multifaceted. They ...

Thank You And Goodbye: Stripping Citizenship From Generations Of Haitian Dominicans, Mark Heisey

GGU Law Review Blog

No abstract provided.

Conceptualizing Capacity: Interpreting Canada’S Qualified Ratification Of Article 12 Of The Un Disability Rights Convention, Nicholas Caivano

Western Journal of Legal Studies

During the negotiations leading up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), States Parties vigorously debated the scope of Article 12, which establishes legal capacity for persons with disabilities “on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life.” The ambiguity of Article 12 has led to many interpretations that have been the subject of debate among human rights activists and academics. Developments in the jurisprudence and legislative reforms across several jurisdictions indicate that governments and courts have begun to grapple with what recognizing the right to legal capacity for persons with disabilities ...

Ceo & Employee Pay Discrepancy: How The Government's Policies Have Encouraged The Gap, David R. Meals

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This paper examines the role of the U.S. Government in the CEO versus worker pay gap, both in contributing to its creation and the ability to reverse it. To better understand this issue, this paper includes a survey of current U.S. and foreign CEO compensation practices, a survey of theories proposed to explain the divergence between U.S. and foreign CEO compensation, a review of the social and business impact of excessive CEO compensation, and identifies socioeconomic theories regarding the excessive CEO pay trend. This is followed by a review of the history of attempted solutions along with ...

Libor: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know But Were Afraid To Ask, Michael R. Koblenz, Kenneth M. Labbate, Carrie C. Turner

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

The goal of this article is to present the reader with a general overview of the LIBOR: its genesis and development, how and why London bankers manipulated the LIBOR, the liability of implicated parties, criminal penalties, the impact of criminal penalties on director and officer insurance carriers, and what the future holds for the LIBOR.

"To Kill A Cleric?: The Al-Awlaki Case And The Chaplaincy Exception Under The Laws Of War", K Benson

K Benson

Anwar al-Awlaki was the first American citizen to be targeted for extrajudicial assassination by the Obama administration. While scholarly attention has focused on legality of his killing under domestic law, his status as a chaplain under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) has gone unexamined. The possibility that Anwar al-Awlaki may have been a protected person as a chaplain has profound ramifications for the legality of his killing and for the conduct of the war on terror more generally. As the definition of a "Chaplain" under IHL is under-developed at best and vague at worst, ideologues such as Mr. al-Awlaki operate in ...

The Environmental Limitations To Property Rights In Brazil And The United States Of America, Leonardo Munhoz

Dissertations & Theses

This thesis aims to comparatively analyze the legislative evolution that environmental protection has experienced in the Brazilian versus the American legal systems and their relationship with property rights.

Demonstrably, Brazil’s concern with the environment actually came into focus in the 1980s and it therefore received treatment within the Federal Constitution of 1988, as a diffuse right, contributing to better, stronger environmental protection.

Similarly, the protection of the environment in the American Constitution and its statutes as well as their enforcement and interpretation within the legal system are explored.

Of concern is the notion that environmental protection and third-generation rights ...

Fisa Reform, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Congress and the Executive Branch are poised to take up the issue of FISA reform in 2014. What has been missing from the discussion is a comprehensive view of ways in which reform could be given effect—i.e., a taxonomy of potential options. This article seeks to fill the gap. The aim is to deepen the conversation about abeyant approaches to foreign intelligence gathering, to allow fuller discussion of what a comprehensive package could contain, and to place initiatives that are currently under consideration within a broader, over-arching framework. The article begins by considering the legal underpinnings and challenges ...

Quack Corporate Governance, Nicholas C. Howson

Articles

From the start of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) “corporatization ” project in the late 1980s, a Chinese corporate governance regime subject to increasingly enabling legal norms has been determined by mandatory regulations imposed by the PRC securities regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Indeed, the Chinese corporate law system has been cannibalized by all - encompassing securities regulation directed at corporate governance, at least for companies with listed stock. This Article traces the path of that sustained intervention and makes a case — wholly contrary to the “quack corporate governance” critique much aired in the United States — that ...