Law Commons^™

Alienage Jurisdiction Over Stateless Corporations: Revealing The Folly Of Matimak Trading Company V. Khalily

San Diego Law Review

The United States of America will enter the new millennium as the business leader of the world, but for how long will it be able to maintain this position? If the final years of the twentieth century are an indication of things to come, it is apparent that geographical and political borders will become even more irrelevant to the scope of business transactions. The increase in the number of offshore corporations' doing business on an international scale is evidence that the world's business leaders will readily change their locale in order to increase profits. Increasingly popular offshore jurisdictions, such as …

New Concern For Transnational Corporations: Potential Liability For Tortious Acts Committed By Foreign Partners

San Diego Law Review

This Comment addresses these broad issues in three parts. First, it discusses past initiatives by various governing bodies and private groups to handle the problem of TNCs investing in countries that commit grave human rights violations. 14 More specifically, the efforts discussed are those of the United Nations, the U.S. Congress and the President, state and city governments, and private groups. 5 Because of the U.S. government's desire to promote free trade, none of these efforts has proved effective in regulating investment activity overseas.

Funding Terrorism: The Problem Of Ransom Payments, Yvonne M. Dutton

San Diego Law Review

This Article draws on the literature about norm influence to suggest an answer: adopting these measures has the potential to impact behavior in a meaningful and constructive way in the future. A norm refers to the appropriate or desired behavior within a community as to a particular issue. A new norm spreads with the help of agents, typically referred to as norm entrepreneurs, who use persuasion to convince a critical mass of actors in the international community to adopt the preferred behavior. In other words, over time, norms can become so pervasive that they change behavior.

In fact, this Article …

From Theory To Practice I: Passing Judgments Of Exploitation, Mathias Risse, Gabriel Wollner

San Diego Law Review

In an earlier work, we offered a view on how trade should be treated within a theory of global justice. We proposed an account of exploitation to spell out the nature of the obligations that arise from trading. That account greatly benefits from a detailed development for concrete cases. The goal of this study and its close companion is to explore how our philosophical views help formulate judgments on a range of moral problems that arise from trading and to identify responsibilities of various actors and inform policy responses to instances of exploitation in trade.

To that end we use …

Legitimacy And The International Trade Regime, Thomas Christiano

San Diego Law Review

Issues of global justice and trade are usually dealt with in terms of what a just system of trade is like and what the distribution of income, opportunities, or welfare ought to be. But the question I address and explore is what a legitimate way of making decisions in the international realm is. This issue has arisen acutely in the case of the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international institutions. In particular, many have complained that developed countries engaged in hard bargaining with developing countries in the conferences that led up to the formation of the …

The Limits Of Custom In Constitutional And International Law, Michael D. Ramsey

San Diego Law Review

This Article does not contend that arguments for extension of custom are illegitimate. Instead, it makes two more limited claims. First, there is an important difference between arguments from pure custom and arguments for the extension of custom, with the latter being more properly called common law arguments. Second, the legitimacy of common law arguments in some fields, especially constitutional law and international law, is substantially more problematic than the legitimacy of arguments from pure custom. The Article develops as follows. Part II sets out in greater detail the proposed distinction between arguments from pure custom and arguments for extension …

Ineffective, Opaque, And Undemocratic: The Ious Of—Too Much—International Law And Why A Bit Of Skepticism Is Warranted, James Allan

San Diego Law Review

In this Article I want to give you an outsider’s view of international law, or at least this outsider’s view. And by outsider I mean someone who is usually interested in legal philosophy and constitutional law and who may well be thought to lack standing to offer the sort of views and criticisms that are to come.... The structure of this Article will be simple. I will criticize certain aspects of international law, especially rights-related international law, under the three headings you see in the title to this Article. However, I am going to take those headings and critiques in …

Shame, Memory, And The Unspeakable: The International Criminal Court As Damnatio Memoriae, Michael Blake

San Diego Law Review

The first [part] will discuss two ways of looking at the court and why the conventional justifications of punishment might not be adequate to justify what the court is doing. The second will examine the issue of the politically unspeakable and argue that the court’s mandate might indeed be the responsibility of making certain ideas and persons politically shameful. The final Part will try to give some justification for the claim that this mandate might give rise to a justification for the court’s existence. On the account I provide here, even if the court could not be justified with reference …

Natural Law As Part Of International Law: The Case Of The Armenian Genocide, Fernando R. Tesón

San Diego Law Review

In this Article I argue that some norms are part of international law even if they have never been created by treaty or custom. Because such norms have never been posited, they are natural law norms, and my thesis is that these natural law norms are as much part of international law as the posited norms. By this I mean that these norms should figure in any catalog of what international law prescribes or permits.

Wrongful Death And Survival Actions For Torts In Violation Of International Law, Alastair J. Agcaoili

San Diego Law Review

This Article aims to make sense of this neglected area of ATS law. I contend that the salient issue in these deceased-victim cases is not whether the nonvictim plaintiffs have standing to sue but rather whether they have a viable cause of action in the first place. Standing and cause of action concepts have an uneasy relationship in law. Although the distinction between constitutional standing and cause of action inquiries is well established, the division is less clear where, as here, standing doctrine is used to define a plaintiff’s eligibility to bring suit. Indeed, reliance on standing terminology in this …

Criteria Of International Tax Policy, Herbert I. Lazerow

San Diego Law Review

Professor Joseph Sneed a generation ago developed seven macro-criteria for evaluating income tax changes. This Article asks whether those criteria are useful in the general field of international income tax. I conclude that Adequacy, Practicality, Equity, and Free Market Compatibility are important internationally, as is a new criterion, Balance-of-payments Enhancement, while the criteria of Reduced Economic Inequality, Stability and Political Order do not figure prominently in international tax.

The Economic Impact Of International Trade On San Diego And The Application Of The United Nations Convention On The International Sales Of Goods To San Diego/Tijuana Commercial Transactions, Ernesto Grijalva, Alexander Imberg

San Diego Law Review

Opponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement ("NAFTA"), were they to take a look, would find the current performance of San Diego's economy antithetical to their economic theories, San Diego is conspicuously lacking the net job loss that free trade opponents were forecasting as the inevitable result of NAFTA. In his book, Save Your Job, Save Our Country: Why NAFTA Must Be Stopped – Now!, Ross Perot, the most prolific NAFTA basher, proclaimed that the economic strength of our entire nation would be jeopardized by NAFTA.' Four and one-half years later, we find that the United States is enjoying …

The Helms-Burton Act: Is The U.S. Shooting Itself In The Foot?

San Diego Law Review

The United States' tool of choice to further its foreign policy goals appears to be economic sanctions. Since 1993, the United States has increasingly applied economic sanctions to further its foreign trade policy. Specifically, more than one-half of the sanctions imposed in the past eighty years have been imposed in only the past four years. The frequent use of economic sanctions has angered and discouraged our allies while significantly weakening the United States' national interests. With so many countries under sanctions, the efficacy of using economic sanctions to promote the United States' foreign policy has been called into question. Suffering …

Harmonizing The Mexican Tax System With The Goals Of The North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), Mauricio Monroy

San Diego Law Review

Prior to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the international tax provisions of the Mexican tax system were in harmony with the then protectionist environment of Mexican trade. The system was characterized by high withholding taxes on the repatriation of profits (i.e., payments from Mexico to parties abroad), frequently at 21 to 35 percent, and high duties on the importation of goods. It was not abnormal to find duties of 100% ad valorem.

Foreign Investment In Mexico's Real Estate: An Introduction To Legal Aspects Of Real Estate Transactions, Manuel Pasero, Hector Torres

San Diego Law Review

During the past ten years, and since the deregulation in most sectors of the Mexican economy, real estate investments increased considerably. Possibly, one of the reasons why people's interest has turned to Mexico is the thousands of miles along the border and seashores that still have not been developed. Whatever the interest of a foreign individual or corporation might be, Mexico is now offering a variety of investment opportunities in the real estate field. Touristry, recreational, industrial, commercial, and even residential purposes are attracting foreign investment in the Mexican real estate market, representing a substantial

portion of the foreign capital …

Amalgam In The Americas: A Law School Curriculum For Free Markets And Open Borders, Mark A. Drumbl

San Diego Law Review

This Article addresses this lacuna by investigating ways in which the American and Canadian common law curriculum could become more responsive to the changing realities of legal practice under NAFTA.

Potentially the following modifications could be introduced on a gradual basis: 1. Introduction of a course to familiarize common law lawyers with the method, principles and practice of civil law, with a directed focus on Mexico; 2. Initiation of a broader NAFTA curriculum, potentially leading to a certificate or designation; and 3. Development of a new law degree, universally recognized in all three NAFTA jurisdictions as a prerequisite to bar …