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Comment On Meir Dan-Cohen, Skirmishes On The Temporal Boundaries Of States, John C. P. Goldberg Apr 2009

Comment On Meir Dan-Cohen, Skirmishes On The Temporal Boundaries Of States, John C. P. Goldberg

Law and Contemporary Problems

Goldberg praises Meir Dan-Cohen's creative thinking about state wrongdoing but argues that it is ultimately unclear how a nation gets relieved of responsibility for its past harms. Equally unclear is why as a normative matter nations should be permitted to obtain temporal shifts. Dyadic conflicts that redefine the wrongdoer might be easier to envision because the victim is empowered to redraw the boundary of the wrongdoer. When a nation commits wrong, the justification for redrawing its boundaries often must come from somewhere other than a single victim's forgiveness.


Skirmishes On The Temporal Boundaries Of States, Meir Dan-Cohen Apr 2009

Skirmishes On The Temporal Boundaries Of States, Meir Dan-Cohen

Law and Contemporary Problems

Dan-Cohen shares his views on group conflicts and how wrongdoers--individuals and groups--get past their wrongdoing. He points out that on the individual level the wrongdoer uses apology and remorse to try to redefine herself as a person in such a way that others no longer continue to hold her responsible for her prior bad conduct. In the process of forgiveness, the wrongdoer's personal identity is redefined in such a way that the reactive attitudes of the victim terminate. He asserts that a similar redefinition occurs when the wrongdoing is committed by a nation. He describes this process as one in …


Feel-Good Formalism, Mitu Gulati, Anna Gelpern Jan 2009

Feel-Good Formalism, Mitu Gulati, Anna Gelpern

Faculty Scholarship

This essay highlights a phenomenon that has no place in the conventional theory of sophisticated business contracts: the term that makes no sense as an enforceable promise, one that defies functional explanation, one that drafters blush to rationalize in retrospect or chalk up to honest mistake. The subset of contract drafters who stop and think about the term before the contract is signed know that it has little enforcement or other instrumental value. Even if a court were to enforce such a term, its interpretation would be extremely hard to predict at signing. Nevertheless, such clauses get included in contracts …


The Coroner’S Inquest: Ecuador’S Default And Sovereign Bond Documentation, Mitu Gulati, Lee C. Buchheit Jan 2009

The Coroner’S Inquest: Ecuador’S Default And Sovereign Bond Documentation, Mitu Gulati, Lee C. Buchheit

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional wisdom is that sovereigns will rarely, if ever, default on their external debts in circumstances where it is clear that they have the capacity to pay. The first line of defense against the errant sovereign is its concern about reputation. It may have to tap the external debt markets again in the future; and there is the fear that the markets will extract revenge. But reputational constraints do not always work because some governments heavily discount future costs in favor of current benefits. When reputational constraints fail, however, a second line of defense is supposed to come into play. …


Foreign Officials And Sovereign Immunity In U.S. Courts, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2009

Foreign Officials And Sovereign Immunity In U.S. Courts, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.