Law Commons^™

Comparative Tax Law Guide, Kim Brooks

OER Texts

This extended bibliography is designed to support comparative tax law study by students, policy-makers, and tax practitioners. Studying comparative tax law is pure joy. And in addition to that, it enables you to:

• more deeply understand your own tax system and context;
• learn about another country’s system and context;
• draw general conclusions about tax law;
• press for or support tax law change;
• facilitate tax law harmonization or coordination among jurisdictions;
• delve into the role of tax in the spread of higher-order values like fairness, equality, transparency, or privacy;
• explain why a country’s tax laws are the way they are; and …

State Responsibility For International Bail-Jumping, Robert Currie, Elizabeth Matheson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Over the last decade, there has been a spate of incidents in Canada and the United States involving Saudi Arabian nationals who, while out on bail for predominantly sexual crimes, were able to abscond from the countries despite having surrendered their passports. Investigation has revealed evidence supporting a reasonable inference that the government of Saudi Arabia has, in fact, assisted its nationals to escape on these occasions. This article makes the case that this kind of conduct amounts not just to unfriendly acts but also to infringements upon the territorial sovereignty of both states and serious breaches of the international …

Cross-Border Evidence Gathering In Transnational Criminal Investigation: Is The Microsoft Ireland Case The 'Next Frontier'?, Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

A recent and prominent American appeals court case has revived a controversial international law question: can a state compel a person on its territory to obtain and produce material which the person owns or controls, but which is stored on the territory of a foreign state? The case involved, United States v. Microsoft, features electronic data stored offshore which was sought in the context of a criminal prosecution. It highlights the current legal complexity surrounding the cross-border gathering of electronic evidence, which has produced friction and divergent state practice. The author here contends that the problems involved are best understood—and …

Flux And Fragmentation In The International Law Of State Jurisdiction: The Synecdochal Example Of Canada’S Domestic Court Conflicts Over Accountability For International Human Rights Violations, Robert Currie, Hugh Kindred

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Any serious exploration of unity and fragmentation in public international law must consider the normative basis of one of the fundamental tools of state action on the international plane: jurisdiction. And no better illustration of the fluctuating application of jurisdiction may be had than to take a national sample – such as Canada – of domestic courts’ struggles to establish accountability for human rights conduct and abuses abroad. The paradigms of the law of jurisdiction, as with the vast corpus of international law, originally responded to the needs of the traditional verities of a legal system based around the state …

New First Principles? Assessing The Internet’S Challenges To Jurisdiction, Teresa Scassa, Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The globalized and decentralized Internet has become the new locus for a wide range of human activity, including commerce, crime, communications and cultural production. Activities which were once at the core of domestic jurisdiction have moved onto the Internet, and in doing so, have presented numerous challenges to the ability of states to exercise jurisdiction. In writing about these challenges, some scholars have characterized the Internet as a separate “space” and many refer to state jurisdiction over Internet activities as “extraterritorial.” This article examines these challenges in the context of the overall international law of jurisdiction, rather than focusing on …

Critique, Culture And Commitment: The Dangerous And Counterproductive Paths Of International Legal Discourse, Geoffrey Hoffman

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this article, international law is viewed as a social and self-constituting phenomenon As the product of international society's actualization, it contains many biases and prejudices. Given the inherent subjectivity of any system designed to regulate relations between people - and peoples - it is of utmost importance to subject international law to a searching scrutiny of its tendencies to emphasise certain interests, to exalt particular groups and to order society in preconceived ways. This article uncovers the insidious structural biases of international law including those just beneath the surface as well as those that are firmly embedded within the …

The Legal Regime Of Enclosed Or Semi-Enclosed Seas: The Particular Case Of The Mediterranean, Paul Gormley

Dalhousie Law Journal

The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention has not only codified the relatively scant corpus of international law relating to the rubrics of enclosed semi-enclosed seas, but it has also given some guidance toward the future evolution of this unique body of sea law. Accordingly the underlying thesis advanced by a number of distinguished authors at a conference - convened by the Inter-University Center in Dubrovnik - is that the Law of the Sea Convention does not represent a definitive or complete corpus of law; rather the general articles will acquire substance from state practice, bilateral agreements between …