Law Commons^™

Sovereignty, Integration, And Tax Avoidance In The European Union: Striking The Proper Balance, Lilian Faulhaber

Faculty Scholarship

As the need to raise revenue becomes more pressing and public opposition to tax avoidance increases, the European Court of Justice has made it more difficult for the twenty-seven Member States of the European Union to prevent tax avoidance and shape fiscal policy. This article introduces the new anti-avoidance doctrine of the European Court of Justice and analyzes it from the perspective of taxpayers, Member States and the European Union legal order as a whole. This doctrine is problematic becasue it has created a legislative vacuum in Europe. No European Union institution has the authority to regulate direct taxation without …

Review Of Law At The Vanishing Point By Aaron Fichtelberg, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This is a largely critical review of Professor Aaron Fichtelberg’s philosophical analysis of international law. The centerpiece of the book’s affirmative agenda, a “non-reductionist” definition of international law that purports to elide various forms of international law skepticism, strikes the reviewer as circular, misguided in general, and, in its application to substantive international legal issues, difficult to distinguish from a rote form of legal positivism. Law at the Vanishing Point’s avowed empirical methodology and critical agenda, while largely unobjectionable, offer little that has not been said before, often with equal if not greater force. I commend the author’s effort to …

Human Rights For Hedgehogs?: Global Value Pluralism, International Law, And Some Reservations Of The Fox, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, a contribution to the Boston University Law Review’s symposium on Ronald Dworkin’s forthcoming book, Justice for Hedgehogs, critiques the manuscript’s account of international human rights on five grounds. First, it is vague: it fails to offer much if any guidance relative to many of the most difficult concrete issues that arise in the field of international human rights law and policy - precisely the circumstances in which international lawyers might benefit from the guidance that moral foundations supposedly promise. It is also troubling, and puzzling given Dworkin’s well-known commitment to the right-answer thesis, that his account of human …

Breaking The Genuine Link: The Contemporary International Legal Regulation Of Nationality, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of nationality traditionally mediated the relationship between the individual and the state in a bygone era in which international law regarded only the latter as a genuine subject of the law; today, its international legal functions have expanded. Yet, as in the past, it remains unclear whether and how international law limits the otherwise almost plenary competence of states to confer their nationality by their internal laws in a way entitled to international recognition. After the International Court of Justice's ("ICJ") 1955 judgment in Nottebohm, however, lawyers began to express this limit with a kind of doctrinal mantra: …

Taxation As A Global Socio-Legal Phenomenon, Allison Christians, Steven Dean, Diane Ring, Adam H. Rosenzweig

Faculty Scholarship

This essay makes a proposal that may not be controversial among those with a particular interest in international law, but may be less accepted among those primarily interested in tax law: that international social and institutional structures shape, and are shaped by, historical and contemporary domestic policy decisions. As a result, to incorporate these lessons, tax scholarship should turn to fields such as international relations, organizational theory, and political philosophy to provide a broader framework for understanding the rapid changes that are taking place in tax policy and politics in the United States and around the world.

Philosopher Kings And International Tax: A New Approach To Tax Havens, Tax Flight, And International Tax Cooperation, Steven Dean

Faculty Scholarship

Tax flight treaties could help to solve the $50 billion-a-year problem that tax flight (the evasion of income taxes through the use of offshore tax havens) poses for the United States. Tax flight treaties would offer tax havens a substantial portion of the increased tax revenues that they could generate by providing the United States with the enforcement assistance it needs. Those payments, potentially representing as much as half of the added tax revenue produced by tax flight treaties (and in all probability an amount that is greater than any GDP gains attributable to eliminating waste and other economic distortions …

Treaty Obligations And National Law: Emerging Conflicts In International Arbitration, William W. Park, Alexander A. Yanos

Faculty Scholarship

In determining the effect of treaties, the adage pacta sunt servanda ("agreements are to be kept") remains a foundation of international law? By contrast, when American courts consider international conventions, the principle barely rises to the rank of analytic starting point.

The Wall And The Law: A Tale Of Two Judgements, Susan M. Akram, S. Michael Lynk

Faculty Scholarship

The seminal rulings in 2004 by the International Court of Justice and the Israeli High Court on the legality of the wall/barrier that Israel is building through the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem provide a study in contrast. While both judgements were critical of the wall/barrier, their judicial approaches and legal conclusions were strikingly divergent, particularly given that the two courts were purporting to rely upon the same principles of international law. The judgements also elicited quite different political and diplomatic reactions, especially among the parties most involved in the Israel/Palestine conflict. This article explores the legal analysis and …

The Milosevic Trial - Live: An Iconical Analysis Of International Law's Claim Of Legitimate Authority, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

It has been argued that international law has recently "come of age", that it is a fully-fledged legal system like any other. It has also been argued that in order for a normative system to qualify as "law" it must, at the least, claim to possess legitimate authority and to be supreme to other normative systems. This article examines one highly visible development in international law - the criminal war trials - from a sociological perspective, trying to discern whether and how international law claims legitimate authority and supremacy. Specifically, it focuses on a deeply symbolic example of international criminal …

Foreword: A Recipe For Effecting Institutional Changes To Achieve Privatization, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Symposium A Recipe for Effecting Institutional Changes to Achieve Privatization

..Of the many questions raised by privatization, this mini-conference will focus on the "how" in different countries: developed and developing, Western countries and the Eastern bloc (including China), emphasizing methodology and cultural traits. Clearly, the "how" will differ in fundamental aspects depending on the political and economic conditions of countries in which the process is taking place

The focus on the "how," however, does not mean that we will not consider other important questions that the movement to privatize raises. The papers presented in this mini-conference reflect a wide range …

The Jewish Perspective In International Law, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

Let me start with two qualifications.

First, this question: is defining the term "Jewish" essential to an exploration of a Jewish vision of international law? The historian Jacob Talmon recalls an exchange between a Gentile and a Jew:

"I thought you were Jewish," said the Gentile.

"Well," answered the Jew, "by a biological standard I am Jewish, since both of my parents were Jewish, but it is 20 years since I sent a letter of resignation to the Jewish community."

"I see," answered the Gentile, "you mean that Jewishness is like a club."

The anecdote captures the evasive quality of …