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A Critical Analysis Of The Women's Constitutional And Legal Rights In Zimbabwe In Relation To The Convention Of The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, Amy S. Tsanga Dec 2017

A Critical Analysis Of The Women's Constitutional And Legal Rights In Zimbabwe In Relation To The Convention Of The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, Amy S. Tsanga

Maine Law Review

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) comprehensively outlines the international standards on the rights of women that are to be pursued by State Parties to the Convention. Adopted by the General Assembly in 1979, it entered into force in 1981 and set the scene for a comprehensive approach to the human rights of women by State Parties that have ratified the Convention. The underlying spirit of the Convention is that discrimination against women violates principles of equality and respect for human dignity and presents obstacles to the advancement of women in the political, …


Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing Dec 2017

Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing

Maine Law Review

The extent to which foreign corporations as well as their domestic subsidiaries can discriminate against American employees on the basis of sex, age, religion, and national origin in a manner that would be acceptable under their own laws and customs but inimical to American law is currently determined by a muddled jumble of circuit court opinions interpreting a “[w]e express no view” Supreme Court footnote. As a result, American victims of sexual discrimination have much less protection under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the discriminating actor is a foreign corporation or its domestic subsidiary than …


The Corporate Face Of The Alien Tort Claims Act: How An Old Statute Mandates A New Understanding Of Global Interdependence, Lorelle Londis Nov 2017

The Corporate Face Of The Alien Tort Claims Act: How An Old Statute Mandates A New Understanding Of Global Interdependence, Lorelle Londis

Maine Law Review

In the past thirty-five years, international human rights lawyers and, more recently, international environmental lawyers, have been invoking the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) as a tool to prosecute human rights abuses committed abroad by transnational corporations (TNs) in U.S. federal courts. The ATCA provides: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Although plaintiffs' lawyers have experienced some success in the human rights context, most claims of environmental abuses have failed. In all these …


Frank M. Coffin Lecture On Law And Public Service: The Future Of International Criminal Justice, Richard J. Goldstone Nov 2017

Frank M. Coffin Lecture On Law And Public Service: The Future Of International Criminal Justice, Richard J. Goldstone

Maine Law Review

The Thirteenth Annual Frank M. Coffin Lecture on Law and Public Service was held in the fall of 2004. Justice Richard J. Goldstone, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and pioneer for international justice and human rights, delivered the lecture. Established in 1992, the lecture honors Judge Frank M. Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, an inspiration, mentor, and friend to the University of Maine School of Law.


Concerning French International Law Manuels: A Critical Review Of The Principal French Textbooks In Public International Law, Alix Toublanc Nov 2017

Concerning French International Law Manuels: A Critical Review Of The Principal French Textbooks In Public International Law, Alix Toublanc

Maine Law Review

The perspectives of French lawyers concerning international law and international institutions are formed largely by the basic course in public international law that they took as law students. Students in the course attend formal lectures by the professor (cours magistraux) and often supplementary section meetings, or tutorials, with instructors (travaux diriges), as well as read all or part of a basic textbook (manuel) in public international law and other assigned materials. One way to gain insight into the fundamental ways of thinking about international law of French lawyers and law-trained officials is to take a close look at the manuels …


Contrasting Perspectives And Preemptive Strike: The United States, France, And The War On Terror, Sophie Clavier Nov 2017

Contrasting Perspectives And Preemptive Strike: The United States, France, And The War On Terror, Sophie Clavier

Maine Law Review

A few years ago, Samuel P. Huntington's article in Foreign Affairs, "The Clash of Civilizations?" described a "West vs. the Rest" conflict leading to the assumption of an essentially unified Western civilization settling "[g]lobal political and security issues ... effectively ... by a directorate of the United States, Britain and France" and centered around common core values "using international institutions, military power and economic resources to run the world in ways that will . . . protect Western interests . . . .” Against the West, the specter of disorder and fundamentalism was looming and would precipitate conflicts. This widely …


Collective Security And The International Enforcement Of International Law: French And American Perspectives, Ana Peyró Llopis Nov 2017

Collective Security And The International Enforcement Of International Law: French And American Perspectives, Ana Peyró Llopis

Maine Law Review

Is the American perspective on the enforcement of international law compatible with the French perspective? For American legal scholars, the term enforcement is sometimes used as the equivalent of the following French notions: mise en oeuvre, application, and also coercition. The American term enforcement appears to be used in situations where the French prefer legal terms that are closer to the connotation of implementation rather than that of enforcement. What are the consequences of the use of such different terms? Is there, behind the use of different language, with different meanings and approaches, a different perspective on the enforcement of …


Unilateral And Multilateral Preventive Self-Defense, Stéphanie Bellier Nov 2017

Unilateral And Multilateral Preventive Self-Defense, Stéphanie Bellier

Maine Law Review

The governing principle of the collective security system created by the United Nations Charter in 19451 is the rule prohibiting the use of force in Article 2(4), which provides that "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purpose of the United Nations." This rule prohibiting the use of force was considered revolutionary at the time because it transformed into international law ideas which had for centuries, if not millennia, preoccupied the minds of people …


Exorbitant Jurisdiction, Kevin M. Clermont, John R.B. Palmer Nov 2017

Exorbitant Jurisdiction, Kevin M. Clermont, John R.B. Palmer

Maine Law Review

Exorbitant territorial jurisdiction in civil cases comprises those classes of jurisdiction, although exercised validly under a country's rules, that nonetheless are unfair to the defendant because of a lack of significant connection between the sovereign and either the parties or the dispute. The United States, France, and most of the rest of the world exercise a good deal of exorbitant jurisdiction so defined. In the United States, an emphasis on power derived from territoriality has led to jurisdictional restraint in some respects, but has also allowed general jurisdiction based solely on transient physical presence, the attachment of property, or extensive …


Application Of Treaties And Decisions Of International Tribunals In The United States And France: Reflections On Recent Practice, Martin A. Rogoff Nov 2017

Application Of Treaties And Decisions Of International Tribunals In The United States And France: Reflections On Recent Practice, Martin A. Rogoff

Maine Law Review

In recent years, with the growth of international treaty law and the increasing role of international tribunals, questions involving the application of conventional international law and the decisions of international tribunals by national courts have assumed great practical importance. This is not only because such questions are arising with increasing frequency, but also because the way in which they are handled by domestic courts has a lot do with the efficacy of international law. As a practical matter, the rules of conventional international law and the decisions of international tribunals, if applied or effectuated by domestic courts, may very well …


Commentary: Convergences And Divergences: The United States And France In Multilateral Diplomacy, André Lewin Nov 2017

Commentary: Convergences And Divergences: The United States And France In Multilateral Diplomacy, André Lewin

Maine Law Review

Despite the divergences that have regularly separated the United States and France, or at the very least their officials-who unfortunately influence public opinion as well-there are, in my opinion, more similarities than differences than one would believe between these two countries' approaches to international relations. They both feel that they have a calling to defend the advancement of universal values in the world in order to further humanity along the road of peace, democracy, happiness, and justice. The United States, which can be considered a relatively new country, values respect for human rights, free enterprise, equal opportunity for everyone, individual …


France, Europe, The United States, Abdelkhaleq Berramdane Nov 2017

France, Europe, The United States, Abdelkhaleq Berramdane

Maine Law Review

Fascination and rejection have always characterized Franco-American relations, like an old couple who are not able to forgive: for France, the battle of Yorktown where Lafayette and Rochambeau contributed to the independence of the former British colonies; for the United States, American participation, twice, in the liberation of France. Neither one willing to credit its salvation to the other. A tumultuous relationship very much resembling the rocky history of the Statue of Liberty ("Liberty Enlightening the World"), offered by a still fragile Republic to a distant sister, who only begrudgingly offered it a pedestal. For centuries French literature has been …


Thought Versus Action: The Influence Of Legal Tradition On French And American Approaches To International Law, Dana Zartner Falstrom Nov 2017

Thought Versus Action: The Influence Of Legal Tradition On French And American Approaches To International Law, Dana Zartner Falstrom

Maine Law Review

In the months leading up to the U.S. intervention in Iraq in March 2003, the dialogue between the United States and France on the appropriate course of action to take in response to Iraq's report on its weapons of mass destruction revealed differences between these traditional allies as to the options available under international law. These differences did not center on the goals of any proposed action-both sides in fact agreed upon the goals, which were to ensure there were no weapons of mass destruction; to prevent an increase in terrorist activity; and to address the continuing violations of international …


French And American Perspectives On International Law: Legal Cultures And International Law, Emmanuelle Jouannet Nov 2017

French And American Perspectives On International Law: Legal Cultures And International Law, Emmanuelle Jouannet

Maine Law Review

I want to begin my consideration of French and American perspectives on international law by addressing more generally the question of the relationship between legal culture and international law in order to broadly contextualize the descriptions of French and American perspectives on international law that are the subject of this Article. I would like to stress at the outset that it seems to me that there does not exist any global or cosmopolitan vision of international law, but, on the contrary, an inevitable multiplicity of particular national, regional, individual, and institutional visions. This is so because the actors in the …


At&T V. Microsoft: Is This A Case Of Deepsouth Déjà Vu?, Christopher R. Rogers Nov 2017

At&T V. Microsoft: Is This A Case Of Deepsouth Déjà Vu?, Christopher R. Rogers

Maine Law Review

It has been stated many times by various courts that the patent laws of the United States do not reach beyond the borders of the United States. In an age of expanding world commerce, the territorial reach of our patent laws has sometimes made it difficult for U.S. inventors to meaningfully protect their intellectual property. For example, the Supreme Court holding in Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp. opened up a loophole that allowed unlicensed U.S. manufacturers to essentially export patented inventions, thereby trampling on the patent rights of U.S. patent holders selling to foreign markets. The Deepsouth loophole has …


China's Judiciary: Current Issues, Jianli Song Nov 2017

China's Judiciary: Current Issues, Jianli Song

Maine Law Review

Since 1978, China has been engaged in a major reform program of economic modernization and growing openness to the outside world. The movement towards a market economy has resulted in impressive economic growth. It has also led to social change, including increasing pressure from segments of the population for greater participation in decision making and respect for human rights. The Chinese government is taking steps towards the rule of law. The legal reforms being carried out go beyond the economic sphere, and also gradually will affect the relationship between individuals and the state. Dialogue with the international community has broadened …


Boumediene V. Bush: Flashpoint In The Ongoing Struggle To Determine The Rights Of Guantanamo Detainees, Michael J. Anderson Oct 2017

Boumediene V. Bush: Flashpoint In The Ongoing Struggle To Determine The Rights Of Guantanamo Detainees, Michael J. Anderson

Maine Law Review

Following the harrowing events of September 11, 2001, and pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed soon thereafter by Congress, the United States Armed Forces began capturing and detaining individuals at the Naval Air Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The choice of where to house these detainees was not random. Internal memoranda from the Justice Department reveal that the Naval Base was selected as a means of avoiding any legal entanglements that might ensue from such imprisonment. What resulted was what some commentators have called a “legal black hole” at Guantanamo, a place where any individual …


African Lawyers Harness Human Rights To Face Down Global Poverty, Lucie E. White Oct 2017

African Lawyers Harness Human Rights To Face Down Global Poverty, Lucie E. White

Maine Law Review

This is an exciting time in Africa. Yes, of course it is true that the rise of fundamentalist political movements, armed conflict, epidemic diseases, and extreme poverty will challenge the continent for decades to come. I don’t need to tell you that. Yet at the same time, we are witness to what many call an “African Renaissance.” In many domains, including the arts, civil society, social provision, and democratic governance, African nations are beginning to take their place in a newly configured globe. One of these domains of energy, innovation, and hope is a new human rights movement. This movement …


Legal Formalism Meets Policy-Oriented Jurisprudence: A More European Approach To Frame The War On Terror, Julien Cantegreil Oct 2017

Legal Formalism Meets Policy-Oriented Jurisprudence: A More European Approach To Frame The War On Terror, Julien Cantegreil

Maine Law Review

Myres S. McDougal, the leader of the New Haven School of International Law (NHSIL), advanced a comprehensive and iconoclastic conception of international law and its goals, one whose continuing influence is well-known today: a visceral rule-skepticism that even his least fervent disciples would never renounce. McDougal’s conception of international law and its goals is fundamentally different from the normativist view of Hans Kelsen, which has been and continues to be enormously influential throughout continental Europe, particularly in France. In the portion of his 1953 course at The Hague Academy of International Law devoted to Kelsen’s canonical Legal Technique in International …


The Role Of Public Interest Groups In Nation-Building: A Maine Lawyer's Experience In Mongolia, Richard A. Spencer Oct 2017

The Role Of Public Interest Groups In Nation-Building: A Maine Lawyer's Experience In Mongolia, Richard A. Spencer

Maine Law Review

In 2006, I spent three months in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia working as an environmental lawyer with a small Mongolian human rights group called the Center for Human Rights and Development (CHRD). CHRD was working to stop human trafficking, promote human rights, and protect the environment in the face of extreme poverty, government secrecy, corruption, and a post-Soviet government dominated by former members of the Communist party. During my time assisting the staff at CHRD, I felt I could hear the voice of James Madison echoing through the centuries and across the globe. In The Federalist No. 10, Madison suggested that the …


Volunteer Lawyers And Nation-Building: Using Experience To Serve The World Community, Jean C. Berman Oct 2017

Volunteer Lawyers And Nation-Building: Using Experience To Serve The World Community, Jean C. Berman

Maine Law Review

It is with great pride that I note the participation of four International Senior Lawyers Project (ISLP) volunteers in this Symposium of the Maine Law Review. These highly accomplished lawyers, three of whom are from Maine and one from Canada, demonstrate perfectly the premises on which ISLP was founded: first, that the skills and experience of senior-level lawyers from the United States and elsewhere can be of great value to emerging democracies, social justice activists, and nations struggling to overcome poverty; and second, that there is a burgeoning pool of such lawyers, both retired and in active practice, who are …


The Role Of A Banking System In Nation-Building, John L. Douglas Oct 2017

The Role Of A Banking System In Nation-Building, John L. Douglas

Maine Law Review

It seems strange to have a discussion of nation-building devoted to the importance of a banking system. After all, when we think of nations, we think of constitutions, borders, and functioning governments. When we think of failed nations, we think of a lack of effective government, a loss of control over society, and a breakdown in law and order. Banks hardly figure into that discussion at all. Indeed, in our society, while banks play an important role, they usually reside quietly in the background. Many of us never set foot in a bank. Our paychecks may be deposited in a …


The Importance Of Commercial Law In The Legal Architecture Of Post-Conflict "New" States, Michael J. Stepek Oct 2017

The Importance Of Commercial Law In The Legal Architecture Of Post-Conflict "New" States, Michael J. Stepek

Maine Law Review

In the era of international relations ushered in by the end of the Cold War, nation-building has become all the rage. In a burst of Wilsonian optimism, Western countries have sought to recreate failed states in their own image, fashioning new governmental institutions from the ashes of violent conflict or civil collapse. These projects became possible in a fresh environment of international consensus that has prevailed since the middle of the 1990s. Developing improved legal institutions has been considered a particularly important component of any state-building project and has been a primary focus of almost all such efforts. A new …


Odious Debts And Nation-Building: When The Incubus Departs, Lee C. Buchheit, G. Mitu Gulati Oct 2017

Odious Debts And Nation-Building: When The Incubus Departs, Lee C. Buchheit, G. Mitu Gulati

Maine Law Review

To most people, the notion that the citizens of a country lucky enough to have ousted a dictator should spend the rest of their lives paying off the debts incurred by that dictator in the name of the state is morally repugnant. This is a situation in which a strict requirement of the law (that governments automatically succeed to, and must honor, the debt obligations of their predecessors) is incongruent with most people’s sense of the morally right outcome. At a superficial level, state responsibility for debts incurred by prior governments resembles the belief that a country carries a collective …


The Rise Of Outsourcing In Modern Warfare: Sovereign Power, Private Military Actors, And The Constitutive Process, Winston P. Nagan, Craig Hammer Oct 2017

The Rise Of Outsourcing In Modern Warfare: Sovereign Power, Private Military Actors, And The Constitutive Process, Winston P. Nagan, Craig Hammer

Maine Law Review

Constitutions are continuous outcomes of power relations. The primary function of any constitution is to manage power, a critical feature of which is the prevention of destructive conflict. Warfare—including its facilitation by failure to pursue diplomatic avenues in some circumstances, and its promotion through the development of technological horrors such as nuclear weapons, mini-nukes, and other weapons of mass destruction—is the foremost challenge to the viability of an international constitutional system. The collapse of the League of Nations provided the world with a stark lesson in how aggression and warfare can undo a weak international constitutional regime dedicated to peace …


Refugees And Internally Displaced: A Challenge To Nation-Building, Rebecca M.M. Wallace, Diego Quiroz Oct 2017

Refugees And Internally Displaced: A Challenge To Nation-Building, Rebecca M.M. Wallace, Diego Quiroz

Maine Law Review

Recent statistics published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) indicate that there are at least 32.9 million people who are “persons of concern to UNHCR.” This growing population includes “refugees, returnees, [and] stateless and internally displaced persons (IDPs).” Furthermore, it is estimated that there are some “[thirty] states in the world . . . that are at some stage or another along the road to possible failure.” These are weak states beset by invasion, civil war, ethnic rivalry and tribal warfare, or struggling in the wake of any of these catastrophes. Given that 2006 saw a fifty-six …


Can Self-Defense Serve As An Appropriate Tool Against International Terrorism?, Jan Kittrich Oct 2017

Can Self-Defense Serve As An Appropriate Tool Against International Terrorism?, Jan Kittrich

Maine Law Review

The phenomenon of terrorism represents one of the gravest challenges to international order, peace, and security. The unpredictable nature of terrorist attacks threatens the public safety of each member of the international community. At the same time, member states’ responses to terrorism appear to threaten the homogeneity of modern international law and disrupt the uniform system of legal rules. In some aspects, it also seems to divide the community of international scholars. Simply put, terrorism deviates from the rule of law and so might the responsive action that it necessitates. This is the potential danger that terrorism intentionally aims to …


A Century Of French International Law Scholarship, Emmanuelle Jouannet Oct 2017

A Century Of French International Law Scholarship, Emmanuelle Jouannet

Maine Law Review

In this study of contemporary French scholarship in the field of international law, I aimed to reveal its reality at the dawn of the 21st century, but I quickly discovered that it is difficult to understand the current trends in this area of scholarship without first placing French international legal thought in the broader context of the evolution of international law itself. It seems that the increased stature of international law and its considerable expansion since 1945 are both accepted and problematic. This evolution is not problematic in and of itself; the problem lies in the increased interest it arouses …


Reflections On Forty Years Of Private Practice And Sustained Pro Bono Advocacy, Stephen H. Oleskey Oct 2017

Reflections On Forty Years Of Private Practice And Sustained Pro Bono Advocacy, Stephen H. Oleskey

Maine Law Review

I am going to address two topics. The first is the one Judge Coffin asked me to address in October 2009, when I was invited to give the 2010 Coffin Lecture: how to combine the private practice of law with an active pro bono practice. The second topic is the one Dean Peter Pitegoff and I agreed to add: a brief discussion of legal developments in national security law since 9/11. My pro bono involvement in Guantanamo Habeas litigation began in 2004 and led directly to my interest in national security law and to my recognition of how difficult it …


Enforcement Dissonance: Lobsters, The Legislature, And Federal Waters In State V. Thomas, Christopher J. Rauscher Oct 2017

Enforcement Dissonance: Lobsters, The Legislature, And Federal Waters In State V. Thomas, Christopher J. Rauscher

Maine Law Review

Consider the following: You, a Maine resident, and your friend, a Massachusetts resident, have gone for a weekend trout fishing trip to Acadia National Park in Downeast Maine. The two of you are happily catching trout, and then each of you hook a bass and reel it in. Keeping the bass is illegal under Maine law but not banned by the National Park. Along comes a Maine game warden, who spies the two of you and cites only you with a fine for catching and keeping the bass. The warden says nothing to the Massachusetts resident who continues to fish, …