International Law Commons^™

The International Tax Environment And Simplification Of South African Tax Legislation: A Double-Edged Sword, Jinyan Li, Teresa Pidduck

Articles & Book Chapters

In this paper, we examine the relationship between the international tax environment and legislative complexity in South Africa’s international tax system. We suggest that the international tax environment is a double-edged sword. It causes complexity in South Africa’s tax legislation as it largely responds to the needs of OECD countries and produces tax rules to deal with ‘sophisticated’ tax problems and taxpayers (such as multinational enterprises). When such rules are transplanted into South Africa, they are typically more complex than local rules dealing with local taxpayers. On the other hand, the international tax environment offers ideas for ‘scientific ...

Adopting And Adjusting To The Development Of The Investor-State Dispute Settlement Mechanism In China’S Recent Bilateral Investment Treaty Negotiations With The European Union, Runyang Liu

Hastings International and Comparative Law Review

The Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism has been widely used in international treaty-making and invoked many times in crossborder dispute resolution. ISDS is a system where a foreign investor can bring claims against a host state for its discriminatory acts upon the investor. As China pursues a new level of outbound investment in the last decade, the ISDS mechanism will apply particularly in the context of investment disputes involving Chinese investors and foreign countries. This note will examine the evolution of ISDS clauses in China’s Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), especially with the European Union (EU), as well as these ...

Planetary Defense: Near-Earth Objects, Nuclear Weapons, And International Law, James A. Green

Hastings International and Comparative Law Review

The risk of a large Near-Earth Object (NEO), such as an asteroid, colliding with the Earth is low, but the consequences of that risk manifesting could be catastrophic. Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented increase in global political will in relation to NEO preparedness, following the meteoroid impact in Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013. There also has been an increased focus amongst states on the possibility of using nuclear detonation, in particular, as a means of diverting or destroying a collision-course NEO, something that a majority of scientific opinion now appears to view as representing humanity’s best—or perhaps only ...

Masthead

Hastings International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Law And The Struggle Against Government Impunity In Africa, John Mukum Mbaku

Hastings International and Comparative Law Review

In recent years, impunity has become pervasive throughout most African countries. In some African countries, impunity is due to the inability of national governments to bring perpetrators of human rights violations to account for their crimes. In others, impunity arises from the unwillingness of government to utilize the existing legal system to bring criminals, whether they are state- or non-state actors, to justice. Effectively combatting impunity in Africa must begin with the reconstruction of African States to provide democratic institutions, which are capable of adequately constraining the government and preventing civil servants and political elites from acting with impunity; and ...

New Punitive Damages In Mexican Law – Or The Chronicle Of A Failed Legal Transplant Foretold?, Edgardo Muñoz, Rodolfo Vázquez-Cabello

Hastings International and Comparative Law Review

In February 2014, the Supreme Court of Mexico, referring to some American cases and scholarly articles, held that punitive damages must be awarded to a tort plaintiff as part of the indemnity afforded by Mexican law under the head of moral damages (daños morales). Before this landmark decision, punitive damages were unknown to the Mexican legal system. The authors submit that the legal transplant carried out in Mexico has a few problems, which concern both the incorrect understanding of the adopted rule and the incompatibility of the host legal system. As a consequence, punitive damages, as they stand now in ...

Private International Law As An Ethic Of Responsivity, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The world is a mess. Populism, xenophobia, and islamophobia; misogyny and racism; the closing of borders against the neediest—the existential crisis of modernity calls for a firm response from ethics. Why, instead of engaging with these problems through traditional ethics, worry about private international law, that most technical of technical fields of law? My claim in this chapter: not despite, because of its technical character. Private international law provides such an ethic, an ethic of responsivity. It provides us with a technique of ethics, a technique that helps us conceptualise and address some of the most pressing issues of ...

Book (Oup) - Proportionality Balancing And Constitutional Governance - Chapter 6.Pdf, Alec Stone Sweet

Alec Stone Sweet

No abstract provided.

Book (Oup) - Proportionality Balancing And Constitutional Governance - Chapter 2.Pdf, Alec Stone Sweet

Alec Stone Sweet

No abstract provided.

Tall Tales Of Danger And Security: How A Critical Human Security Approach Can Address Major Contradictions Revealed Through A Critical Narrative Analysis Of Dominant U.S. Security Strategies, Stephen Schneider

Master's Theses

Over many generations, humans have developed many perspectives and practices regarding the best ways to recognize and address what they perceive to be dangerous. Stories are used to help shape and narrate perceptions about the world, and they serve to pass on vital information that impacts how a society responds to threats and vulnerabilities. These narratives of danger and security are subjective to the experiences and political intentions of society, and therefore in many ways are partial and biased in their assessments and policies. This results in flawed security practices that may actually exacerbate threats or create new insecurities. What ...

A Conversation With The Honorable Rosalie Silberman Abella And Dean Matthew Diller, Rosalie Silberman Abella, Matthew Diller

Fordham Law Review

DEAN MATTHEW DILLER: This year we are leading up to our celebration of 100 Years of Women at Fordham Law School. In September 1918, the Fordham Law faculty voted to admit women, and we are planning to celebrate that in style. But tonight perhaps is a bit of a teaser for that. Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella is a woman of firsts. She is the first Jewish woman to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada, and before the Supreme Court, when she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court in 1976, she became the first Jewish woman ...

Multilateral Economic Institutions And U.S. Foreign Policy: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Multilateral Int'l Dev., Multilateral Insts., & Int'l Econ., Energy, & Envtl. Pol'y Of The S. Comm. On Foreign Relations, 115th Cong., Nov. 27, 2018 (Statement Of Jennifer A. Hillman), Jennifer A. Hillman

Testimony Before Congress

Virtually every major international gathering of world leaders recently has ended in failure—or at least failure to reach enough agreement to issue a concluding statement or communique. These failures come at a time when many have been looking for signs that world leaders would come together to address the most pressing problems facing the world—including climate change, the breakdown in the rules of the international trading system, the need everywhere for good jobs that pay a living wage, and rapidly growing income inequality.

The failure of these meetings to produce formal agreements—or even specific paths to reaching ...

Ike’S Constitutional Venturing: The Institutionalization Of The Cia, Covert Action, And American Interventionism, Jacob A. Bruggeman

Grand Valley Journal of History

U.S. covert action from the 1950s onward was shaped, in part, by the success a CIA-orchestrated coup d'état in which the United States deposed the popular Iranian nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh. Ordered by president Eisenhower, the coup in Iran set the precedent for utilizing covert action as a means of achieving State goals. In so doing, President Eisenhower overturned the precedent set by his immediate predecessor, President Truman: that is, the precedent of using the CIA in its intended function, gathering and evaluating intelligence. The coup, then, is an exemplary case of venture constitutionalism. Eisenhower, in ordering the coup ...

Expansive Disclosure: Regulating Third-Party Funding For Future Analysis And Reform, Rachel Denae Thrasher

Boston College Law Review

Third-party funding (TPF) is a relatively new phenomenon in the field of international investment arbitration. TPF takes place when a non-party to a dispute provides funding to one of the parties (usually the claimant) in return for a percentage of the amount recovered. International investment arbitration is a unique context, however, because investor-states dispute settlement puts States always in the role of respondent and private investors in the role of claimants. Despite this apparent imbalance, TPF proponents argue, among other things, that it provides much needed access to justice for poorer clients and adds value to the system by providing ...

Justice For All? Protecting The Public Interest In Investment Treaties, Alessandra Arcuri, Francesco Montanaro

Boston College Law Review

Investment arbitration has come increasingly under fire because of its design flaws. There is an emerging consensus that investment treaty arbitration not only falls short of ensuring a sufficient degree of transparency of arbitral proceedings and impartiality of arbitrators, but also that its institutional architecture is unjustifiably asymmetric, entrusting foreign investors with significant rights while no protection is afforded to the host states’ constituencies. In response to these criticisms, several states have attempted in recent years to reform the rules governing investor-state arbitration. A perusal of recently concluded international investment agreements, however, reveals that the reform efforts so far have ...

Should Investment Treaties Contain Public Policy Exceptions?, Caroline Henckels

Boston College Law Review

The increasing inclusion of exceptions in newly concluded investment treaties, together with the divergent manner in which tribunals and annulment committees have approached these provisions, suggests that a greater understanding of their role and purpose is needed. In particular, the question whether exceptions operate as permissions or as defenses is a crucial but unaddressed issue that has significant implications for both litigation and practice and, in turn, implications for the stability of the regime. This Essay argues that as a starting point, exceptions should be understood as permissions that limit the scope of the substantive treaty obligations, and not as ...

Making Investment Arbitration Work For All: Addressing The Deficits In Access To Remedy For Wronged Host State Citizens Through Investment Arbitration, Emmanuel T. Laryea

Boston College Law Review

The current dominant system for resolving international investment disputes is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement system or, more precisely, the Investor-State Arbitration system (ISA). The ISA system has proved to be an effective avenue for remedy for foreign investors whose investments are wrongfully impaired by host states. However, the system is not accessible to Host State Citizens (HSCs) whose interests may be harmed by investors. Wronged HSCs can seek redress in domestic fora only. The domestic fora in many jurisdictions leave many wronged HSCs without remedy, a problem that has long been acknowledged. This Essay proposes a solution. It proposes that ...

Investment Treaties, Offshore Finance, And The Resource Curse, Karl M.F. Lockhart

Boston College Law Review

Questions of how best to understand offshore financial centers (“OFCs”)—countries that have low or zero tax rates, strong banking secrecy regulation, and easy-to-form legal entities—and what, if anything, the international community should do about them remain fixed on the agenda of national and international discourse. This Essay seeks to provide a new theoretical perspective on tax havens and applies this perspective to the cross-border legal regimes that govern international investment. This new analytical framework sees offshore financial centers as countries that are victims of the “resource curse,” as that term is described in economic development literature. Often physically ...

(Re)Calibration, Standard-Setting And The Shaping Of Investment Law And Arbitration, Eric De Brabandere

Boston College Law Review

Calibrating or (re)calibrating investment law and arbitration—depending on whether the exercise takes place for the first or a subsequent time—is different from rebalancing investment law and arbitration. A balancing exercise denotes a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions to maintain a sort of equilibrium. This Essay argues that investment law and arbitration are not necessarily about creating a situation in which all “elements” are in balance and that (re)calibrating is an interesting starting point for a discussion about the contemporary regime of investment law and arbitration, and especially to explore ...

I Wanna Design For Somebody (Who Needs Me): The Intersection Of Humanitarian Engineering, Choice-Of-Law, And Technology Transfer In Kenya, Sean Patrick Mcginley

Boston College Law Review

A significant technology gap exists between developed and developing countries. Though developing countries have started to self-innovate, they do not possess adequate means to fulfill their right to develop, which the UN recognizes as an essential human right. For developing countries to exercise this right, developed countries must transfer technology. Humanitarian engineers have confronted this challenge without any international guidance or regulation, as no uniform system for international technology transfer agreements exists. To remedy this inadequacy, scholars have proposed the characteristic approach, which suggests that the contents of the contract, rather than the parties’ locations, should control the choice of ...