Law Commons^™

Corruption And Development: The Need Of International Investigations With A Multijurisdictional Approach And The Involvement Of Multilateral Development Banks With National Authorities, Juan Ronderos, Michelle Ratpan, Andrea Osorio Rincon

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

The authors argue that while both Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and national governments have mechanisms to fight corruption, the outcomes of these enforcement mechanisms diverge. MDBs are interested in the causes and effects of corruption from a development perspective and, as such, tend to sanction Small and Medium Enterprises and individuals, while national governments are focused on a more punitive outcome, targeting larger multinational corporations. The article examines the enforcement objectives articulated in national legislation, namely the American Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act and its Canadian counterpart (the CFPOA) as well as several Canadian cases, on the one hand, and …

Consult, Consent And Veto: International Norms And Canadian Treaties, Shin Imai

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Large parts of Canada, from Ontario to parts of British Columbia and north to the Northwest Territories, are covered by the “numbered treaties”, signed between First Nations and the Crown between 1871 and 1929. These treaties provide for the creation of small reserves for the Indians, and the “surrender” of the remaining tracts of land to the Crown. The land that is “surrendered” continues to be available for Indigenous hunting, fishing and harvesting activities. However, once the land is “taken up” by the provincial Crown for activities such as mining, lumbering and settlement, the treaty rights to hunt, fish and …

Book Review: Joseph Rikhof, The Criminal Refugee: The Treatment Of Asylum Seekers With A Criminal Background In International And Domestic Law, Angus Gavin Grant

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Book Review of Joseph Rikhof, The Criminal Refugee: The Treatment of Asylum Seekers with a Criminal Background in International and Domestic Law.

Corruption At The Intersection Of Business And Government: The Oecd Convention, Supply-Side Corruption And Canada's Anti-Corruption Efforts To Date, Milos Barutciski, Sabrina A. Bandali

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Over the last twenty years, international and regional conventions have been concluded to combat the corruption of public officials. Part I of the paper explains the genesis of international anti-corruption law and its focus on the "supply-side" of bribery transactions, drawing on the negotiating history and the experience of practitioners involved in the development of international anti-corruption law. Parts II and III examine Canada's implementation of its international obligations and its enforcement record to date. Part IV of the paper concludes with an analysis of the challenges faced by Canadian businesses and the limitations of the focus on supply-side of …

Can Greece Be Expelled From The Eurozone? Toward A Default Rule On Expulsion From International Organizations, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

The ongoing European crisis has raised uncomfortable questions about the conditions under which treaty-based unions of nations like the EU or the EMU can legally expel a member—Greece being the most obvious candidate. The EU, for example, has rules governing the voluntary withdrawal of members, but says nothing about whether a member can be expelled. As a matter of international law, what does the silence mean? Put differently: What is the default rule regarding expulsions when a treaty says nothing about forced withdrawals? Is there an absolute bar on expulsion, as some have suggested? Conversely, is there an implicit right …

Presidential War Powers As A Two-Level Dynamic: International Law, Domestic Law, And Practice-Based Legal Change, Curtis A. Bradley, Jean Galbraith

Faculty Scholarship

There is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the United Nations Charter or specific Security Council resolutions authorize nations to use force abroad, and there is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the U.S. Constitution and statutory law allows the President to use force abroad. These are largely separate areas of scholarship, addressing what are generally perceived to be two distinct levels of legal doctrine. This Article, by contrast, considers these two levels of doctrine together as they relate to the United States. In doing so, it makes three main contributions. First, it demonstrates striking parallels …

Justice, Reconciliation, And The Masculinist Way: What Role For Women In Truth And Reconciliation Commissions?, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

During periods of armed conflict, women and girls are frequently subjected to violence because of their gender. National governments have attempted to address this issue through transitional justice mechanisms like truth and reconciliation commissions. The record of women’s input and participation in these processes, however, is rather poor. In this article, I highlight the role of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) and the opportunity the SATRC missed in failing to comprehensively confront andexamine the systemic nature of violence against women under apartheid. Many transitional justice mechanisms, the SATRC being one of the more vivid examples, have adopted a …

Can Parallel Lines Ever Meet? The Strange Case Of The International Standards On Sovereign Debt And Business And Human Rights, Daniel D. Bradlow

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This special issue is a cooperation of the Yale Journal of International Law and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). It emerged from UNCTAD’s work on sovereign debt workouts, specifically from its Working Group on a Sovereign Debt Workout Mechanism (2013 to 2015). The working group developed a Roadmap and Guide for Sovereign Debt Workouts, published in 2015. It proposes an incremental approach to sovereign debt workouts that relies on the continuous, progressive development of sovereign debt restructuring practice. This work has inspired the adoption of Basic Principles for Sovereign Debt Restructuring by the United Nations General …

Law Enforcement Access To Data Across Borders: The Evolving Security And Rights Issues, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Emerging International Trends And Practices In Guardianship Law For People With Disabilities, Robert Dinerstein

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In this article, the authors identify current trends in promoting supported decision-making as an alternative to guardianship for people with disabilities. Support for supported decision-making (SDM) and other reforms to guardianship can be found in international conventions and declarations (notably, Article 12 of the CRPD); Concluding Observations and General Comment No. 1 issued by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and in various countries (or states/provinces/localities within those countries), including the United States, where developments in state legislation, state court cases (including the Jenny Hatch case, in which one of the co-authors was counsel and another …

J.D. Program Concentrations 2016 International Law International Law Concentration, Nova Southeastern University

Shepard Broad College of Law Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

A Hitchhiker’S Guide To The Oecd’S International Vat/Gst Guidelines, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

The OECD’s International VAT/GST Guidelines, which were released in their consolidated form at the OECD’s Global Forum on VAT in Paris in late 2015, are the culmination of nearly two decades of efforts to provide internationally accepted standards for consumption taxation of cross-border trade, particularly trade in services and intangibles. This article provides a roadmap to the Guidelines, especially for readers who may be unfamiliar with consumption tax principles, in general, or VATs in particular. Part II of the article provides the background to the Guidelines, describing the basic features of a VAT, the problems with which the Guidelines are …

Securing Child Rights In Time Of Conflict, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Each term in the title of this essay seems simple, yet provides much food for analytical thought. The essay thus explores: what is “conflict,” and whether there is a “time” when it is not present; who is a “child”; whether and to what extent children enjoy “rights”; and, finally, how local, national, and international regimes go about “securing” those rights. The essay – based on a talk given at the 2015 International Law Weekend in New York – concludes with a glance at a new potential avenue for child security: the Sustainable Development Goals which the U.N. General Assembly adopted …

Children, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This chapter, which appears in The Cambridge Companion to International Criminal Law (William A. Schabas ed. 2016), discusses how international criminal law instruments and institutions address crimes against and affecting children. It contrasts the absence of express attention in the post-World War II era with the multiple provisions pertaining to children in the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court. The chapter examines key judgments in that court and in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, as well as the ICC’s current, comprehensive approach to the effects that crimes within its jurisdiction have on children. The chapter concludes with a …

The Business Of Treaties, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

Business entities play important and underappreciated roles in the production of international treaties. At the same time, international treaty law is hobbled by state-centric presumptions that render its response to business ad hoc and unprincipled.

This Article makes three principal contributions. First, it draws from case studies to demonstrate the significance of business participation in treaty production. The descriptive account invites a shift from attention to traditional lobbying at the domestic level and private standard-setting at the transnational level to the ways business entities have become autonomous international actors, using a panoply of means to transform their preferred policies into …

Presidential War Powers As An Interactive Dynamic: International Law, Domestic Law, And Practice-Based Legal Change, Curtis A. Bradley, Jean Galbraith

All Faculty Scholarship

There is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the United Nations Charter or specific Security Council resolutions authorize nations to use force abroad, and there is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the U.S. Constitution and statutory law allows the President to use force abroad. These are largely separate areas of scholarship, addressing what are generally perceived to be two distinct levels of legal doctrine. This Article, by contrast, considers these two levels of doctrine together as they relate to the United States. In doing so, it makes three main contributions. First, it demonstrates striking parallels …

The Dod Law Of War Manual And Its Critics: Some Observations, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) new Law of War Manual has generated serious debate about its treatment of a variety of issues including human shields, the status of journalists, cyber operations, the precautions to be taken prior to attacks and even the role of honor in war. Although this article does not purport to be a comprehensive response to every critique of the Manual and, indeed, cites opportunities for its improvement, it nevertheless concludes that on balance the Manual provides an excellent, comprehensive and much-needed statement of DoD’s view of the lex lata of the law of war.

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 …

Banning Metal Mining In Guatemala, Randall S. Abate, Raquel Aldana

Journal Publications

Metal mining is unsustainable for Guatemala and its harms insurmountable for its people. Guatemalans who oppose metal mining have been fighting for decades domestically and internationally against the environmental degradation and other human rights abuses from metal mining activities in the country with little to show for their efforts. The State is too weak and corrupt to offer much hope for reform. Guatemala requires extensive governance reforms to become the type of strong democracy capable of reaping the potential benefits of metal mining in its territory. This is a long-term project. Most Guatemalans opposed to metal mining already know this, …

Ocean Iron Fertilization And Indigenous Peoples' Right To Food: Leveraging International And Domestic Law Protections To Enhance Access To Salmon In The Pacific Northwest, Randall S. Abate

Journal Publications

Ocean iron fertilization (OIF) is a new and controversial climate change mitigation strategy that seeks to increase the carbon-absorbing capacity of ocean waters by depositing significant quantities of iron dust into the marine environment to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton blooms. The photosynthetic processes of these blooms absorb carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it to the ocean floor. OIF has been criticized on several grounds. including the foreseeable and unforeseeable adverse consequences it may cause to the marine environment, as well as the daunting challenge of reconciling several potentially overlapping sources of international and domestic environmental law, which may …

A Time Of Turmoil, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson, Orla Lynsky, Christopher Millard

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Introductory Note To United Nations Security Council Resolution 2298, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

On July 22, 2016, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2298 supporting efforts by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to remove chemical weapons from Libya and facilitate their destruction in another country. This resolution was critical to the international effort to prevent chemical weapons in Libya from being at risk of acquisition by members of the so-called Islamic State operating in Libya.

An Innovative Matrix For Dispute Resolution: The Dubai World Tribunal And The Global Insolvency Crisis, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Harold Koster

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This study examines a legal experiment that occurred during the height of the global financial crisis. As markets from the United States to Europe to the Global South shook, one country – the United Arab Emirates – found itself on the brink of economic collapse. In particular, in 2009 the U.A.E’s Emirate of Dubai was contemplating defaulting on $60 billion of debt it had amassed. Recognizing that such a default would have cataclysmic reverberations across the globe, Dubai’s governmental leaders turned to a small group of foreign lawyers, judges, accountants, and business consultants for assistance. Working in a coordinated fashion, …

Foreign Governments As Plaintiffs In U.S. Courts And The Case Against "Judicial Imperialism", Hannah L. Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

One consequence of the increasingly transnational nature of civil litigation is that U.S. courts must frequently address the interests of foreign sovereigns. These interactions arise primarily in three contexts: when a foreign government is the defendant in a U.S. court; when a claim requires a U.S. court to scrutinize actions taken by a foreign government; and when a U.S. court seeks to apply U.S. law to persons or conduct within a foreign government’s borders. Each of these contexts invokes a narrative in which the engagement of U.S. courts interferes or conflicts with the prerogatives of a foreign sovereign. As a …

The Hidden Costs Of Strategic Communications For The International Criminal Court, Megan A. Fairlie

Faculty Publications

In little more than a decade, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has received nearly 11,000 requests for its Prosecutor to conduct atrocity investigations around the globe. To date, no such communication has resulted in an official investigation. Nevertheless, the act of publicizing these investigation requests has proven to be an effective, attention-getting tool that can achieve valuable, alternative goals. This fact explains the increasing popularity of “strategic communications” — highly publicized investigation requests aimed not at securing any ICC-related activity, but at obtaining some non-Court related advantage. This Article, which is the first to identify this trend, explains why the …

Seeking Inconsistency: Advancing Pluralism In International Criminal Sentencing, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

25 Years, Where Are We Now? Global Trade & Sovereign Debt, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Wächter, Carl Georg Von, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Carl Georg von Wächter (1797-1880) was once considered 'one of the greatest German jurists of all times’, but was all but forgotten in the 20th century, despite an excellent dissertation on his work in private international law by Nikolaus Sandmann. In private international law, he is known mainly for his critique of earlier theories, in particular the theory of statutes. Positively, Wächter is mainly (and not accurately) known as a proponent of a strong preference for the lex fori and as such mainly presented in opposition to Friedrich Carl von Savigny’s theory (Savigny, Friedrich Carl von). Only recently has there …

International Legal Protections For Migrants And Refugees: A Response To Father Brennan, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

Father Brennan’s Essay, “Human Rights and the National Interest: The Case Study of Asylum, Migration, and National Border Protection,” is a complex legal and ethical analysis of refugee law. This Commentary focuses on one aspect of the international law relevant to the Essay, namely, state obligations to migrants. Father Brennan’s main argument that migrants and refugees may be turned back, so long as the action respects human rights law, is consistent with the human right to life. Justly stopping migrants and refugees requires states to stop them before they enter either international waters or the state’s territorial waters. Further, Father …

Feminism And International Law In The Post 9/11 Era, Jayne C. Huckerby

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.