Law Commons^™

Beyond Trade Deals: Charting A Post-Brexit Course For Uk Investment Treaties, Lise Johnson, Lorenzo Cotula

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Brexit referendum has raised questions about the future terms of the United Kingdom’s engagement with the world economy. While a debate over the UK’s future approach to trade deals has already begun, a similar discussion has yet to develop on the treaties that govern foreign investment. As this briefing note by Lorenzo Cotula of the International Institute for Environment and Development, and Lise Johnson of CCSI highlights, the stakes are high: ill-designed treaties could leave the UK excessively exposed to legal claims by foreign companies and could fail to address relevant economic, social and environmental challenges. While meaningful negotiations …

The European Union’S Emerging Approach To Isds: A Review Of The Canada-Europe Ceta, Europe-Singapore Fta, And European-Vietnam Fta, Gus Van Harten

Articles & Book Chapters

The European Union’s approach to ISDS is examined based on the available textual evidence in proposed or negotiated trade agreements. The evaluation focuses on three criteria: judicial independence, procedural fairness, and balance in the allocation of rights and responsibilities. Each criteria arises from concerns about the powerful and far-reaching arbitration mechanism at the core of ISDS and its role to decide the legality of sovereign conduct and allocate public funds to foreign investors. The main conclusions are that, in pursuing a massive expansion of ISDS in new trade agreements, the European Union has taken only partial steps on the issue …

The Luxembourg Effect: Patent Boxes And The Limits Of International Cooperation, Lilian V. Faulhaber

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article uses patent boxes, which reduce taxes on income from patents and other IP assets, to illustrate the fact that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice has a longer reach than has previously been recognized. This article argues that, along with having effects within the European Union, the ECJ’s decisions can also have effects on countries outside of the EU. In the direct tax context, the ECJ’s jurisprudence has hampered the ability of both EU and non-EU countries to police international tax avoidance.

In 2015, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proposed restrictions on patent …

Which Doctrine Has Had The Bigger Impact On Eu Law, Direct Effect Or Supremacy?, Adrian Berski

Reports

The doctrines of the supremacy of the European Union (EU) and of the direct effect of EU law are both based on the competence of the EU . The EU can act only within the limits of its competence, and has them only as much as entrusted its Member States. Before this state of affairs, the competences of the EU were regulated by Articles 5 and 7 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community (Consolidated Version, 2002)[1]:

The Community shall act within the limits of the powers conferred upon it by this Treaty and of the objectives assigned …

El Ineficiente Diseño De La Legislación Concursal Española: Una Propuesta De Reforma A Partir De La Experiencia Comparada Y De Un Análisis Económico Del Derecho Concursal [The Inefficient Design Of The Spanish Bankruptcy Act: A Proposal To Enhance The Attractiveness Of The Spanish Bankruptcy Regime Based On An Economic And Comparative Analysis Of Insolvency Law] In Spanish, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Spain has one of the world´s lowest business bankruptcy rates (that is, number of business bankruptcies per firm). Some authors have argued that the low usage of bankruptcy procedures in Spain is due to a ‘cultural’ problem faced by Spanish entrepreneurs. According to this hypothesis, the lack of a ‘bankruptcy culture’ makes Spanish entrepreneurs to be afraid of the use of the bankruptcy system. In this paper, however, I advocate for a totally different hypothesis. In my opinion, the low rate of business bankruptcies in Spain is not due to a ‘cultural’ problem but to an institutional one. Namely, I …

Update To The European Human Rights System, James Hart Mr.

Law Librarian Articles and Other Publications

This is an update to The European Human Rights System, which described the founding, development, and bibliography of the Council of Europe (COE), the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It describes what has happened between the publication of that article in 2010 and the end of 2014. This update covers the alleviation of the pressures on the European Court of Human Rights, improvements in the publication and dissemination of the ECtHR’s documents, the Draft Treaty of Accession, and the case that is a barrier to …

Large-Scale Dispute Resolution In Jurisdictions Without Judicial Class Actions: Learning From The Irish Experience, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Recent years have seen an unprecedented expansion of the ability to assert large-scale claims in national judicial systems, either on a collective or representative (class) basis. Numerous countries, including many that excoriated United States-style class actions in the past, have now adopted various forms of collective redress as society's need to respond large-scale claims has increased. Although every jurisdiction has developed its own unique method of responding to large-scale legal injuries, there appears to be a growing consensus that contemporary legal systems require some means of responding to widespread harm involving the same or similar facts. Not every jurisdiction has …

Terrorist Sanctions: The Clash In Us And Eu Approaches, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Outsized Costs Of Investor–State Dispute Settlement, Lise Johnson, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The negotiation of several mega-treaties in 2015, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and other regional agreements, has generated substantial public discussion about the protections and privileges afforded to multinational enterprises through the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism in these treaties. ISDS has increasingly raised concerns among certain governments and civil society groups, particularly as a growing number of ISDS cases involve investors challenging a range of governmental measures taken in good faith and in the public interest, including measures related to environmental protection, public health …

The Structure Of Corporate Ownership And Control, Sophia Dai, Christian Helfrich

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

Dual Class Shares, Katie Bentel, Gabriel Walter

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

Notable Governance Failures: Enron, Siemens And Beyond, Michael Primbs, Clara Wang

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

Executive Compensation, Moritz Reinhard, Daniel Velazquez Escobar

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

Executive Compensation: Mannesmann V. Disney - A Case Study, Do Hee Jeong, Maurice Weidhaas

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

A Tale Of Two Continents: Environmental Management-Based Regulation In The European Union And The United States, Rachel E. Deming

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Free Access To Law Of The European Union And Its Member States, Alexis Fetzer

Law Faculty Publications

While Europe may lie across the pond, there are many reasons why today’s practitioner would need to research the law of the European Union or one of its member states. However, with a complex institutional structure and multiple bodies producing various forms of law, researching the law of the EU can seem like a daunting task.

As with any research in an area of unfamiliar law, a good place to begin is with a research guide. Prepared by subject experts, research guides will point to relevant sources for locating primary material and often contain helpful explanations that assist in understanding …

The Human Rights Of Sea Pirates: Will The European Court Of Human Rights Decisions Get More Killed?, Barry Hart Dubner, Brian Othero

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Opinion 2/13 Of The Court (C.J.E.U.), Daniel Halberstam

Articles

Opinion 2/13 of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) declared the draft agreement on European Union accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) incompatible with the Treaty on European Union. The Opinion comes toward the end of a long and gradual process of incorporating human and fundamental rights principles into the legal system of the European Community and its successor, the European Union. Opinion 2/13 sends the Commission back to the drawing board on what has long been seen as the capstone of that process—EU accession to the Strasbourg human rights regime as an external …

Formalism And Functionalism In Antitrust Treatment Of Loyalty Rebates: A Comparative Perspective, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

It is a widely held belief that U.S. antitrust law has long been characterized by economic functionalism and that European antitrust law has long been characterized by legal formalism.' The received wisdom began to change in Europe a decade ago when the Directorate General Competition of the European Commission (DG Comp) began to advocate a more "effects-based" analysis of abuse of dominance. Two factors arguably contributed to this change. First, the DG Comp became increasingly influenced by economists who had little use for the old formalism. Second, as Europe trie to spread antitrust to developing antitrust regimes across the world-and, …

The European Union: A Comparative Perspective, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter, to be included in the Oxford Principles of EU Law volume, compares the federalisms of Europe and the United States. It argues that Europe can be sensibly viewed from both federal and intergovernmental perspectives, and that particular aspects of the European Union’s structure fit each model. In particular, the EU is federal—that is, integrated to a comparable degree to the U.S.—with respect to its distribution of competences and the sovereignty attributed to EU law and institutions. But it is intergovernmental—that is, it preserves a center of gravity within the individual member states—with respect to the allocation of governmental …

Minimum Fees For The Self-Employed: A European Response To The "Uber-Ized" Economy?, Eva Grosheide, Mark Barenberg

Faculty Scholarship

In advanced market economies in Europe and North America, a large and growing percentage of the workforce is self-employed. This group earns a contractual fee from clients, rather than a wage or salary from employers, one form of the so-called "Uberization" of the labor market. Through an analysis of the Court of Justice of the European Union's (CJEU) rulings, this Article explores whether minimum fees for the self-employed could be implemented without infringing European Union (EU) competition law. In particular, it lays out four possible legal mechanisms – what the paper dubs "U-turns" – that swerve around the social harms …

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 …

Gender Diversity On Corporate Boards: The Competing Perspectives In The U.S. And The Eu, Tyler Winters, Madhuri Jacobs-Sharma

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

Securities Regulation In Germany And The U.S., Marvin Fechner, Travis Tipton

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

Shareholders Vs Stakeholders Capitalism, Fabian Brandt, Konstantinos Georgiou

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

With the growth of the economies worldwide the debate between shareholder and stakeholder capitalism has never been more intense than nowadays. Each country though incorporates this debate differently in its interior market since its corporate governance’s structures present distinguished characteristics. Thus, by bringing into this debate countries like Germany and the USA, the distinction between shareholders and stakeholders’ interests becomes clearer. Countries based on the Anglo-Saxon business model like the USA are in favor of a “shareholder primacy” based system setting as their optimal goal the maximization of shareholder value. On the other hand, countries like Germany seem to have …

One-Tier Vs. Two-Tier Board Structure: A Comparison Between The United States And Germany, David Block, Anne-Marie Gerstner

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Private Litigation, Benedict Heil, Benjamin Lee

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

The Manner In Which Corporate Law And Financial Regulations Are Made, Supawich Sirikanchana, Sharareh Zand

Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

No abstract provided.

A World Elsewhere: Secession, Subsidiarity, And Self-Determination As European Values, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Corporate Governance Changes As A Signal: Contextualizing The Performance Link, Merritt B. Fox, Ronald J. Gilson, Darius Palia

Faculty Scholarship

Promoting “good” corporate governance has become an important concern. One result has been the creation of indexes that purport to measure the quality of a firm’s corporate governance structure. Prior scholarship reports a positive relationship between firms with good corporate governance index ratings and stock-price-based measures of a firm’s ability to create share value, such as Tobin’s Q. Little work, however, explores why we observe this relationship.

We hypothesize one reason for the relationship is that a rating-altering change in corporate governance structure can be a signal concerning the quality of a firm’s management. Changes in governance structures that result …