Law Commons^™

In Search Of An Environmental Ethic, Alyson C. Flournoy

UF Law Faculty Publications

A preliminary analysis of several core environmental provisions suggests that the mix of values embedded in our environmental statutes is substantially similar to the values found in the common law and non-environmental statutes. That is, the environmental statutes tend to reflect human concerns that predate any dawning of environmental awareness -- with only a modest introduction of new values or reasons for caring that are uniquely attributable to concern for the human relationship to the environment. If this is true, it seems to undermine a tenet of the public debate. It may call into question the very naming of these …

The Environmental Commerce Clause, Christine A. Klein

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article studies every commerce clause decision of the modem Supreme Court that involves the scope of governmental authority to regulate the use of natural resources. These decisions comprise what I will call the environmental commerce clause -- the Court's interpretation of the limits mandated by the commerce clause upon federal and state legislation protecting natural resources. Overall, the Court has been limiting the scope of the affirmative commerce clause while simultaneously expanding the reach of the dormant commerce clause. As a result, both federal and state efforts to protect the natural environment have been rendered constitutionally suspect.

This study …

An International Tax Regime In Crystallization, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

The grand illusion of a single, worldwide, tax system that will eliminate all international inefficiencies, and assist all the nations of the world to maximize their relative advantages, is, as commonly accepted, utopian. The tax, academic and professional, writing in the field of international taxation, and cross-border interaction, between tax systems and jurisdictions has grown, exponentially, in the last decade, but no significant work has been done to prove, or disprove, the naivety of this hypothesis. Some scholars and tax executives, in certain international organizations, have discussed ideas along this line, but no single organization has, seriously, attempted to promote …

Shared Knowledge, Shared Jurisprudence: Learning To Speak Environmental Law Creole (Criollo), Thomas T. Ankersen

UF Law Faculty Publications

The character of the legal and judicial systems in Latin America and the Caribbean is undergoing fundamental change.' Traditionally weak judiciaries are emboldened, precedent as a jurisprudential decision-making tool has become increasingly important, the apparatus of administrative law has become more sophisticated and complex, and increasingly sophisticated reporting systems and the "globalization" of shared jurisprudence through contemporary communication media have all contributed to the development of law in the region. These broader systemic developments, though uneven and incomplete, have occurred in tandem with the emergence of environmental law as a unique and discrete body of law.

This Article traces several …

Legal Cultures Of Latin America And The United States: Conflict Or Merger, Michael Wallace Gordon

UF Law Faculty Publications

I am uncertain about how LatCrits think about the legal cultures of Latin America and the United States, and what I might possibly add to this collection of America's preeminent group of LatCrits. Perhaps what might be useful is to draw upon my thirty-five years of teaching law to note some examples where the two cultures have come in conflict or have merged. One might wish to know who "won," or better, what survived, when they came in conflict or merged. An example of the former is when new states of this union in the 1800s were presented with an …

Latcritical Encounters With Culture, In North-South Frameworks, Pedro A. Malavet

UF Law Faculty Publications

A critical introduction of a group of articles in the LatCrit VI Symposium issue, discussing the authors' diverse approaches to Latin American legal cultures and contextualizing the publications in the growing body of LatCrit scholarship. The Essay discusses how the other essays in the issue fit within or challenge the themes of the specific roundtable, plenary, or workshop in which they were presented, and then locates the cluster within the present and the future of LatCrit Theory generally, and LatCritical praxi in particular. This Essay addresses each presentation, the specific conference context(s) in which it was delivered, and how the …

Contributions, Distributions, And Assumption Of Liabilities: Confronting Economic Reality, Karen C. Burke

UF Law Faculty Publications

To combat a relatively arcane international tax-shelter abuse, Congress recently amended Code sections 357 and 362 governing contributions of encumbered property to a corporation. This Article offers a critical assessment of the recent amendments to the liability assumption rules of section 357 and corresponding basis provisions of section 362. Part I explores the divergence between the former liability assumption rules and the "economic benefit" doctrine of the section 1001 regulations. Part II focuses on the technical definition of assumption of recourse and nonrecourse liabilities under amended section 357(d). Part III examines the corollary basis provisions of section 362, as modified …