Law Commons^™

Law, Lawyers And Sustainable Development: Reflections Of A Fellow Traveler, Muna B. Ndulo

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

At the national level, the rule of law is necessary to create an environment for providing sustainable livelihoods and eradicating poverty. Poverty often stems from disempowerment, exclusion and discrimination. The rule of law fosters development through strengthening the voices of individuals and communities, by providing access to justice, ensuring due process and establishing remedies for the violation of rights. Security of livelihoods, shelter, tenure and contracts can enable and empower the poor to defend themselves against violations of their rights. Legal empowerment goes beyond the provision of legal remedies and supports better economic opportunities. In order for the rule of …

Against Populist Isolationism: New Asian Regionalism And Global South Powers In International Economic Law, Pasha L. Hsieh

Cornell International Law Journal

This Article provides the most up-to-date examination of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which is poised to become the world’s largest free trade agreement (FTA). It argues that the 16-country mega-FTA will galvanize the paradigm shift in Asian regionalism and build a normative foundation for the Global South in international economic law. Based on intertwined theoretical and substantive claims, this Article opens an inquiry into the assertive legalism of developing nations in the new regional economic order. It further manifests the pivotal force of emerging economies against populist isolationism in the Trump era that undermines the neoliberal foundation of …

The Ethical Challenges Of The Marketplace, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Markets For Self-Authorship, Hanoch Dagan

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Markets are complex phenomena with heterogeneous manifestations. They involve different types of goods and services and can be structured around different property and contract types. This plurality of markets justifies a careful attitude towards the definition of a market. It also counsels some suspicion towards overly-broad normative judgments, be they celebratory or critical, launched at markets-as-such.

But markets are powerful institutions that significantly impact individuals, affect relationships, and shape societies. They should thus be subject to critical scrutiny vis-A-vis the various goals that justify the complex legal arrangements which sustain them. Promoting social welfare, rewarding desert, inculcating virtues, and spreading …

Just Prices, Robert C. Hockett, Roy Kreitner

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

In what sense do market prices represent or convey value? At first glance, such prices might look like the upshot of spontaneous social aggregation without exogenously imposed order: uncoordinated individual trading decisions yield "price information" that is said both to induce socially efficient productive decisions and to set a framework that facilitates coherent and welfare-enhancing consumer choice. But while some trading decisions might well be uncoordinated,far from all of them are; and the rules within which trade is conducted are in any event the product of social choice. When we recognize that these rules of trade and certain public practices …

Against Market Insularity: Market, Responsibility, And Law, Avihay Dorfman

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

In this Article, I take stock of some leading attempts to drive a wedge between distinctively market reasoning and practical (including moral) reasoning. Although these attempts focus on different normative foundations-the epistemology of market interaction, the autonomy of its participants, the stability-enhancing quality of markets, and the authority of democratic decision-making-they are of a piece insofar as they seek to trivialize the role of private responsibility for realizing the demands of morality and justice. Essentially, they seek to insulate, at least to an important extent, the market practice of doing well from the demands of doing right. I argue that …

General Theory Of Law And Development, Yong-Shik Lee

Cornell International Law Journal

Although scholarship in law and development that explores the relationship between law and social and economic progress has evolved over the last four decades, this area of inquiry remains unfamiliar to many legal scholars, lawyers, and policy makers. Scholars have not yet been able to develop a theory that systematically explains the interrelationship between law and development, which would establish law and development as a robust and coherent academic field. This Article attempts to fill this gap by presenting a general theory that defines the disciplinary parameters of law and development, and explains the mechanisms by which law impacts development. …

Lgbt Rights Are Human Rights: Conditioning Foreign Direct Investments On Domestic Policy Reform, Dara P. Brown

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Social Security Is Fair To All Generations: Demystifying The Trust Fund, Solvency, And The Promise To Younger Americans, Neil H. Buchanan

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

The Social Security system has come under attack for having illegitimately transferred wealth from younger generations to the Baby Boom generation. This attack is unfounded, because it fails to understand how the system was altered in order to force the Baby Boomers to finance their own benefits in retirement. Any challenges that Social Security now faces are not caused by the pay-as-you-go structure of the system but by Baby Boomers' other policy errors, especially the emergence of extreme economic inequality since 1980. Attempting to fix the wrong problem all but guarantees a solution that will make matters worse. Generational justice …

Paying For Risk: Bankers, Compensation, And Competition, Simone M. Sepe, Charles K. Whitehead

Cornell Law Review

Efforts to control bank risk address the wrong problem in the wrong way. They presume that the financial crisis was caused by CEOs who failed to super­vise risk-taking employees. The responses focus on exe­cutive pay, believing that exe­cu­tives will bring non-execu­tives into line—using incen­­­­tives to manage risk-taking—once their own pay is regu­lated. What they over­look is the effect on non-executive pay of the com­pe­­ti­­tion for talent. Even if exe­­cu­tive pay is regu­lated, and exe­cu­tives act in the bank’s best interests, they will still be trapped into providing incentives that encourage risk-taking by non-executives due to the negative exter­nality that arises …

Stabilisation Clauses And The Zambian Windfall Tax, Sangwani Ng'ambi

Zambia Social Science Journal

Over the past decade, Zambia has seen an increase in the flow of foreign direct investment; a large quantity of which went into the copper mining industry. The price of copper increased radically, which prompted the Zambian government to reconsider the preferential tax regime that foreign mining companies enjoyed to ensure that Zambia benefited from this change in circumstances.

The tax regime was originally implemented to encourage the inflow of foreign capital, and to revive an industry that had been crippled by previously low copper prices. The concession agreements between the Government of Zambia and the mining companies contained Stabilisation …