Law Commons^™

The Myth Of Slavery Abolition, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Faculty Articles

In many countries today, slavery and the slave trade continue with impunity. International human rights law prohibits both abuses, but states are rarely held accountable and people who are enslaved or slave traded rarely receive redress. This Article offers a novel account of why international human rights law advocacy neglects slavery and the slave trade. Specifically, this Article demonstrates that the abolition of the Transatlantic and East African slave trades was achieved through a legal framework that marginalized the human rights of enslaved persons while consolidating empire. In the wake of World War II, prohibitions on slavery and the slave …

The Insidious War Powers Status Quo, Rebecca Ingber

Faculty Articles

This Essay highlights two features of modern war powers that hide from public view decisions that take the country to war: the executive branch’s exploitation of interpretive ambiguity to defend unilateral presidential authority, and its dispersal of the power to use force to the outer limbs of the bureaucracy.

Environmental War, Climate Security, And The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

This Article addresses the Russia-Ukraine conflict’s broad implications for energy security, climate security, and environment protections during wartime. I assert that in the short-term the Russian-Ukraine war is poised to hinder much-needed international climate progress. It will stymie international decarbonization efforts and cause greater uncertainty in other climate-destabilized parts of the world, such as the Arctic. While Russia has become a pariah in the eyes of the United States and other Western nations, it has forged new partnerships and capitalized on new, lucrative energy markets outside the West and Global South. But in the long term, the global renewable energy …

Model For Understanding Cedaw's Impact On Implementing Gender Equality Reforms: Lessons From Canada And India, Amanda L. Stephens

Faculty Articles

This Article provides a model for examining the impact of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ("CEDAW") on implementing gender equality reforms using Canada and India, two CEDAW State Parties, as case studies. It also explores the influence of heteropatriarchy, deeply rooted cultural norms perpetuating gender inequality, on hindering CEDAW's ratification in the United States, as well as CEDAW's effectiveness in implementing reforms in Canada and India. The analysis showcases how non-governmental organizations ("NGOs") in these countries have nevertheless achieved limited successes through their mobilization of CEDAW to address specific gender injustices, such as …

Climate Security Insights From The Covid-19 Response, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The climate change crisis and COVID-19 crisis are both complex collective action problems. Neither the coronavirus nor greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions respect political borders. Both impose an opportunity cost that penalizes inaction. They are also increasingly understood as nontraditional, novel security threats. Indeed, COVID-19’s human cost is staggering, with American lives lost vastly exceeding those lost in recent armed conflicts. And climate change is both a threat accelerant and a catalyst for conflict—a characterization reinforced in several climate-security reports. To counter COVID-19, the President embraced martial language, stating that he will employ a “wartime footing” to “defeat the virus.” Perhaps …

Climate Change And The Specter Of Statelessness, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

What happens when climate change extinguishes entire nations? Neither international nor environmental law has provided a satisfactory answer to this weighty question. Climate change-induced flooding, storm surge, and sea level rise threaten the territorial integrity and habitability of several small island developing states, raising the specter of statelessness. We know that climate catastrophe is coming, but we have failed to take the necessary steps to safeguard several developing nations. This Article argues that innovative legal and policy solutions are needed today to prevent nation extinction tomorrow. I focus on two potential international governance solutions: the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate …

Unsettling Human Rights Clinical Pedagogy And Practice In Settler Colonial Contexts, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Caroline Bishop Laporte

Faculty Articles

In settler colonial contexts, law and educational institutions operate as structures of oppression, extraction, erasure, disempowerment, and continuing violence against colonized peoples. Consequently, clinical legal advocacy often can reinforce coloniality--the logic that perpetuates structural violence against individuals and groups resisting colonization and struggling for survival as peoples. Critical legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), has long exposed colonial laws and practices that entrench discriminatory, racialized power structures and prevent transformative international human rights advocacy. Understanding and responding to these critiques can assist in decolonizing international human rights clinical law teaching and practice but is insufficient in …

Prohibiting Slavery & The Slave Trade, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Faculty Articles

Slavery and the slave trade stubbornly persist in our time, but they receive insufficient attention in international human rights law. Even when courts adjudicate slavery violations, they often fail to characterize slave trade conduct that nearly always precedes slavery. Courts also characterize acts that meet the definition of slavery or the slave trade only as other human rights harms, such as forced labor or human trafficking. This failure to accurately characterize violations also as slavery and the slave trade perpetuates impunity and denies victims full expressive justice. This Article argues for reviving international human rights law’s prohibitions of slavery and …

Disaggregating Slavery And The Slave Trade, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Faculty Articles

International law prohibits slavery and the slave trade as peremptory norms, customary international law prohibitions and crimes, humanitarian law prohibitions, and non-derogable human rights. Human rights bodies, however, focus on human trafficking, even when slavery and the slave trade—and not human trafficking—are enumerated within their mandates. International human rights law has conflated human trafficking with slavery and the slave trade. Consequently, human trafficking has subsumed the slave trade and, at times, slavery prohibitions, increasing perpetrator impunity for slavery and the slave trade abuses and denying full expressive justice to survivors.

This Article disaggregates slavery from the slave trade and slavery …

A New Framework For Digital Taxation, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Karen Sam

Faculty Articles

The international tax regime has wide implications for business, trade, and the international political economy. Under current law, multinational enterprises do not pay their fair share of taxes to market countries where profits are generated because market countries are only allowed to tax companies with a physical presence there. Digital companies, like Google and Amazon, can operate entirely online, thereby avoiding market country taxes. Multinationals can also exploit existing tax rules by shifting their profits to low-tax jurisdictions, thereby avoiding taxes in the residence country where their headquarters are located.

Recently, a global tax deal was reached to tackle these …

Equality Offshore, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

Global governance architecture, crafted by wealthy nations, has perpetuated the subordination of developing jurisdictions. The Article offers a novel and surprising analysis of governance tools used by wealthy countries and inter-governmental organizations to constrain offshore financial centers (OFCs) by focusing on the tools’ disparate impacts on tax havens whose populations comprise predominantly Black and Brown people. With tax haven issues garnering increasing attention, this Article provides a pathbreaking conceptual framework for examining the international tax, crime, and business discourse on OFCs. It also illuminates how the actions of powerful international actors, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development …

Responding To Mass, Computer-Generated, And Malattributed Comments, Steven J. Balla, Reeve Bull, Bridget C.E. Dooling, Emily Hammond, Michael A. Livermore, Michael Herz, Beth Simone Noveck

Faculty Articles

A number of technological and political forces have transformed the once staid and insider dominated notice-and-comment process into a forum for large scale, sometimes messy, participation in regulatory decisionmaking. It is not unheard of for agencies to receive millions of comments on rulemakings; often these comments are received as part of organized mass comment campaigns. In some rulemakings, questions have been raised about whether public comments were submitted under false names, or were automatically generated by computer “bot” programs. In this Article, we examine whether and to what extent such submissions are problematic and make recommendations for how rulemaking agencies …

Tax Harmony: The Promise And Pitfalls Of The Global Minimum Tax, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Young Ran (Christine) Kim

Faculty Articles

The rise of globalization has become a double-edged sword for countries seeking to implement a beneficial tax policy. On one hand, there are increased opportunities for attracting foreign capital and the benefits that increased jobs and tax revenue brings to a society. However, there is also much more tax competition among countries to attract foreign capital and investment. As tax competition has grown, effective corporate tax rates have continued to be cut, creating a “race-to-the-bottom” issue.

In 2021, 137 countries forming the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS passed a major milestone in reforming international tax by successfully introducing the framework …

Is Climate Change A Threat To International Peace And Security?, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

This article argues that climate change’s destabilizing impacts require us to look at existing international governance tools at our disposal with fresh eyes. As such, Council climate action cannot and should not be dismissed out-of-hand. As conflicts rise, migration explodes, and nations are extinguished, how long can the Council remain on the climate sidelines? Hence, my call for a re-conceptualized “Council 3.0” to meet the climate security challenges this century.

This article proceeds as follows. In Part II, I describe and analyze the current state of climate science and the climate-security threats facing the world. This includes an analysis of …

International Commercial Courts In The United States And Australia: Possible, Probable, Preferable?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

As worldwide interest in international commercial courts grows, questions arise as to whether individual nations can or should seek to compete in the “litigation market” by developing their own cross-border business courts. This essay compares the prospects of the United States and Australia in this regard, focusing on whether it is possible (Section II), probable (Section III), and preferable (Section IV) for one or both of these two federalized, common law nations to develop an international commercial court as part of their national judicial systems. The inquiry is particularly intriguing given that one country (the United States) has had a …

From The Frying Pan To The Fire: Scotus’ Fsia Inaction As Further Permitting Executive Branch Intervention In “Takings Exception” Cases And Its Consequences In Forcing Holocaust Plaintiffs To Return To Europe, Richard H. Weisberg

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) very recently punted and left wide a circuit split on a key question under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”): Do plaintiff Holocaust victims need to return to the country that wronged them in order to proceed in a United States federal court that otherwise had jurisdiction over their claims? While sending down unresolved a conflict between the D.C. and Seventh Circuits, in a companion case also involving Holocaust victims, SCOTUS essentially ended an action against Germany by taking the strong suggestion of the Executive Branch through its Solicitor General that a …

Reckoning: Dialogue About Racism, Antiracists, And Business & Human Rights, Erika George, Jena Martin, Tara Van Ho

Faculty Articles

Video of George Floyd's death sparked global demonstrations and prompted individuals, communities and institutions to grapple with their own roles in embedding and perpetuating racist structures. The raison d'tre of Business and Human Rights (BHR) is to tackle structural corporate impediments to the universal realization of human rights. Yet, racism, one of the most obvious of such barriers, has been a blind spot for BHR. While the field has contended with gender inequality, there have only been tokenistic nods to intersectional harms caused by business activities. The failure to address racism seriously undermines both the promise of BHR generally and …

Missing In Action: The International Crime Of The Slave Trade, Patricia Viseur Sellers, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Faculty Articles

The slave trade prohibition is among the first recognized and least prosecuted international crimes. Deftly codified in, inter alia, the 1926 Slavery Convention, the 1956 Supplementary Convention, Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions (AP II), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the norm against the slave trade — the precursor to slavery — stands as a peremptory norm, a crime under customary international law, a humanitarian law prohibition and a non-derogable human right. Acts of the slave trade remain prevalent in armed conflicts, including those committed under the Islamic State …

Population Law And Policy: From Control And Contraception To Equity And Equality, Victoria Mather

Faculty Articles

As a young professor at St. Mary's University School of Law in the 1980s, I had the opportunity to teach in our summer program in Innsbruck, Austria. At the time, faculty members were required to teach an international or comparative law course, and I developed a mini-course in population law and policy. Over the last thirty years, I have had the opportunity to rethink and redevelop the course and to teach it during fifteen summers in the beautiful Austrian Alps. Our summer program became known as the St. Mary's Institute on World Legal Problems, and my course developed into a …

Armed Conflict At The Threshold, Deborah Pearlstein

Faculty Articles

Seventeen years into the United States’ engagement in what America has controversially understood as a global, non-international armed conflict against a shifting set of terrorist groups, a growing array of scholars has called for a reassessment of the significance of the “armed conflict” classification under international humanitarian law (IHL). The existence of an “armed conflict” has long been understood as a proxy on/off switch of inescapable importance. When an “armed conflict” exists, lethal targeting—without regard to particular self-defensive need or immediacy of threat—is permitted as a first resort. When an “armed conflict” does not exist, it is not. Challenging the …

It's Complicated: The Challenge Of Prosecuting Tncs For Criminal Activity Under International Law, Jena Martin

Faculty Articles

Like it or not, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) are taking an increasingly active role in larger societal issues and debates. Whether it's a social advocacy campaign that seeks to reduce violence and bullying, a decision by a pharmacy company to stop selling tobacco products, or a sportswear company's decisions to take a stand in solidarity with an advocate's resistance to police brutality, TNCs are becoming increasingly vocal regarding their role in larger societal issues.

But there is a darker side to the increased intermingling between corporations and the larger societal impact; namely the potential for a corporation to be involved, or …

Developing Countries And International Economic Law: The Case Of Burma, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Roughly a quarter of a century ago, developing countries, in large numbers, signed on to the 1994 revision of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade3 ("GKTT 1994") and to membership in its umbrella institution, the World Trade Organization ("WTO"). Notwithstanding their erstwhile reluctance to do business with and compete against developed countries that in many instances had been colonial oppressors, they took on substantial obligations under the WTO agreements. Developing countries did so, in part, because they feared being left behind economically in a world where free trade prospered.

Foreign Patent Decisions And Harmonization: A View Of The Presumption Against Giving Foreign Patent Decisions Preclusive Effect In United States Proceedings In Light Of Patent Law International Harmonization, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

Where there is a United States patent, there are also likely multiple foreign counterpart patents. Armed with a patent, a holder can then move to stop others from infringing on his invention, and more often than not, the defendant will argue that the United States patent is invalid, often citing foreign decisions and proceedings in support of that claim. Given the territorial nature of patents and the fact that countries have different requirements and standards for granting patents, United States courts have applied a presumption against giving preclusive effect to foreign patent decisions. The courts, however, have made clear that …

Co-Belligerency, Rebecca Ingber

Faculty Articles

Executive branch officials rest the President’s authority in today’s war against ISIS, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups on an expansive interpretation of a 15-year-old statute, the 2001 “Authorization for Use of Military Force” (AUMF), passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They rely on that statute to justify force against groups neither referenced in – nor even in existence at the time of – the 2001 statute, by invoking a creative theory of international law they call “co-belligerency.” Under this theory, the President can read his AUMF authority flexibly, to justify force against not only those groups covered …

Closing Impunity Gaps For The Crime Of Aggression, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Faculty Articles

As stated at Nuremberg, the crime of aggression is the “supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” International instruments clearly and repeatedly have outlawed initiating wars of aggression and other illegal uses of armed force. States parties recently have defined and codified the crime in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and delineated the scope of the ICC’s jurisdiction over aggression. Although the ICC is an important mechanism for accountability and justice, it is not certain when it will be able to adjudicate …

China's Bilateral Investment Treaties With African States In Comparative Context, Won Kidane

Faculty Articles

In the last decade, China has made significant investments all over Africa. The principal legal instruments designed to protect Chinese investment in Africa are Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). Traditionally, BITs were largely designed to protect Northern investment in the South. This article evaluates their adaptability to South-South relations through a comparative study of China-Africa BITs in light of China’s BITs with the North, principally the recently ratified China-Canada BIT.

China-African Investment Treaties: Old Rules, New Challenges, Won Kidane

Faculty Articles

This paper analyzes the existing China-African BITs and puts forward some suggestions for its improvement. The extraordinary rise in the last decade of Chinese investment in Africa continues to be a subject of profound curiosity. That is largely because it defies the centuries-old norm on who invests where. Traditionally, the bulk of foreign investment had flowed North-South but rarely South-South. Whenever and wherever it occurred, the means of its protection ranged from direct military intervention to a bona fide and equitable legal framework. China had experienced the full range of treatments in its long history of dealings with the West, …

The China-Africa Factor In The Contemporary Icsid Legitimacy Debate, Won Kidane

Faculty Articles

The International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), affiliated with the World Bank, was created at a time when most African countries had just gained independence and foreign investment required a more legitimate protection in the former colonies. The ICSID Convention, which set up the Centre, came into force on October 14, 1966. The majority of the ICSID cases involved Africa, Western Europe, and North America. Today, Africa's largest infrastructure financier is no longer the World Bank—it is China. China does not have as much experience with ICSID as Africa, although it has shown interest in pursuing investment …

Collateral Damage: Protecting Cultural Heritage In Crimea And Eastern Ukraine, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

Since the early spring of 2014, the world has watched Russia utilize military forces to invade and annex territory belonging to Ukraine. These actions are, unsurprisingly, raising concerns in Eastern Europe over the prospect of armed conflict in the region, the political consequences of Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory, and the effect of this conflict on ordinary civilians. But there is another potential cost associated with Russia's actions that should not be overlooked - the loss of Ukrainian cultural heritage. History is replete with examples of the destruction of cultural heritage during periods of instability, from Napoleon's systematic looting of …

King Tut And Tahrir Square: The Egyptian Revolution Of 2011 And The Advantage Of Viewing Cultural Heritage Destruction Through A Right To Culture Lens, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.