Law Commons^™

Evolution Of Water Institutions In The Indus River Basin: Reflections From The Law Of The Colorado River, Erum Sattar, Jason Robison, Daniel Mccool

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Transboundary water institutions in the Indus River Basin can be fairly characterized as broken in key respects. International relations between India and Pakistan over the Indus Waters Treaty, as well as interprovincial relations within Pakistan over the 1991 Water Accord, speak to this sentiment. Stemming from research undertaken by the authors for the Harvard Water Federalism Project and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), this Article seeks to spur the evolution of the Indus River Basin’s water institutions by offering a comparative perspective from North America’s most “institutionally encompassed” basin, the Colorado River Basin. Mindful of the importance …

Oil Under Troubled Waters?: Some Legal Aspects Of The Boundary Dispute Between Malawi And Tanzania Over Lake Malawi, Tiyanjana Maluwa

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article examines the legal aspects of the respective claims by the two claimants to the northeastern stretches of the lake: to the eastern shoreline by Malawi and to the median line by Tanzania. Maluwa proceeds as follows. First, the Article sketches out the historical and political background of the dispute and examines some preliminary legal issues in Part I. Part II discusses the legal significance of boundaries, state succession to boundary treaties, and the relevance of post-colonial African state practice in this respect. A central aspect of this practice is the adoption by African states of the principle of …

Fixing Patent Boundaries, Tun-Jen Chiang

Michigan Law Review

The claims of a patent are its boundaries, defining the scope of exclusion. This boundary function of claims is undermined by the fact that claims can be changed throughout the life of the patent, thereby moving the patent boundary. A boundary that can be moved at-will is one that the public cannot rely upon. This Article explores the problems of malleable patent boundaries. If a claim can be amended to permit a patentee to capture something he did not foresee when filing the patent application, the amendment confers an unexpected windfall that did not contribute to incentives to invent before …

Fault At The Contract-Tort Interface, Roy Kreitner

Michigan Law Review

The formative period in the history of contract and tort (in the second half of the nineteenth century) may be characterized by the cleavage of contract and tort around the concept of fault: tort modernized by moving from strict liability to a regime of "no liability without fault," while contract moved toward strict liability. The opposing attitudes toward fault are puzzling at first glance. Nineteenth-century scholars of private law offered explanations for the opposition, reasoning that alternative ideas about fault account for the different character of state involvement in enforcing private law rights: tort law governs liabilities imposed by law …

Public International Law And Its Territorial Imperative, Dino Kritsiotis

Michigan Journal of International Law

Territory, or the concept of territory, thus asserts itself throughout the discipline of public international law, and its influences can be felt either through direct means or discrete.

Canada-United States Cooperative Approaches To Shared Marine Fishery Resources: Territorial Subversion?, Ted L. Mcdorman

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay will focus on how Canada and the United States have both succeeded and failed in adopting cooperative approaches to managing ocean fishery resources. A critical factor that has influenced these efforts is the introduction of an international legal construct dictating that States have exclusive sovereign rights respecting all marine living resources within 200 nautical miles of their shores. Cooperative approaches to managing transboundary marine living resources between Canada and the United States are necessary for two reasons. First, in the case of marine living resources, the resource pays scant attention to human-constructed national boundaries. Put another way, marine …

Bordering Capabilities Versus Borders: Implications For National Borders, Saskia Sassen

Michigan Journal of International Law

A core argument of this Essay is that the capability to make borderings has itself switched organizing logics: from institutionalizing the perimeter of a territory to multiplying transversal borderings cutting across that perimeter. This switch is partly linked to the types of scalar shifts in the operational space of a growing number of systems. To the more economic systems already mentioned above, let me add such diverse instances as the policing of the illegal drug trade, the war on terror, the judicial and political struggle to protect human rights, and the environmental effort to reorganize transnational economic sectors, including the …

Assemblage-Oriented Ocean Resource Management: How The Marine Environment Washes Over Traditional Territorial Lines, John A. Duff

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay assesses challenges that arise when marine territorial boundaries do not encompass the appropriate assemblage of resources and relationships necessary for effective authority and management. It reviews the manner in which certain offshore resource uses have been "quasi-territorialized" by the application of other forms of jurisdiction. It also highlights regime-jurisdiction-private interest-oriented responses to territory-oriented challenges in the form of assemblages of authority, interests, space, and time. Given the scalar progression of the links in the discussion, the assessment moves from international principles to exercises of national sovereignty to domestic administration of space and resources to private legal interests.

Human Security And The Rights Of Refugees: Transcending Territorial And Disciplinary Borders, Alice Edwards

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay examines the concept of human security through the lens of refugee protection. In particular, the author asks whether the concept of human security could add anything to the international protection regime for refugees and asylum seekers under international law. Before international lawyers can reject the notion of human security on the basis of its non-legal, and therefore nonbinding, character, it is necessary to examine the gaps in the existing legal framework, into which policy discourse, including security discourse, may step in as an important player.

The Shifting Border Of Immigration Regulation, Ayelet Shachar

Michigan Journal of International Law

While American immigration law is still largely informed by the doctrine of plenary power, which holds that "[a]dmission to the United States is a privilege granted by the sovereign" (as the Supreme Court asserted in Knauff more than fifty years ago), what has dramatically changed in recent years is the location of "our gates," which no longer stand at the country's territorial edges. Instead, the border itself has become a moving barrier, a legal construct that is not tightly fixed to territorial benchmarks. This shifting border of immigration regulation, as we might call it, is selectively utilized by national …

Condominum Arrangements In International Practice: Reviving An Abandoned Concept Of Boundary Dispute Resolution, Joel H. Samuels

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article attempts to revive the consideration of condominium as a possible solution to contemporary boundary disputes. Part I describes specific historic instances of condominia and derives relevant lessons from each instance. Part II notes that some critics of condominium have in fact confused condominium with other forms of joint dominion over territory. This Part proceeds, therefore, to distinguish condominium from these other arrangements. Next, Part III discusses how experiences with common property regimes over common resources (such as water supplies) might inform the contemporary use of condominium. Finally, informed by lessons articulated in Parts I through III, Part IV …

Suburbs As Exit, Suburbs As Entrance, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Michigan Law Review

Most academics assume that suburbanites are "exiters " who have abandoned central cities. The exit story is a foundational one in the fields of land-use and local-government law: exiters' historical, social, and economic connections with "their" center cities are frequently used to justify both growth controls and regional government. The exit story, however no longer captures the American suburban experience. For a majority of Americans, suburbs have become points of entrance to, not exit from, urban life. Most suburbanites are "enterers "-people who were born in, or migrated directly to, suburbs and who have not spent time living in any …

Transboundary Pollution: Harmonizing International And Domestic Law, Noah D. Hall

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Addressing transnational pollution requires both international and domestic law. Transnational pollution is an international problem that demands and deserves the attention of international legal mechanisms such as treaties, agreements, arbitration, and international management and governance. At the same time, transnational pollution problems can often be addressed more effectively and efficiently through the domestic legal system. An ideal approach is to harmonize transnational pollution management and dispute resolution under international and domestic law. This Article seeks to provide pragmatic, feasible, and politically realistic solutions to transnational pollution by harmonizing international and domestic law. However, given the diversity in geography, domestic legal …

Redefining American Democracy: Do Alternative Voting Systems Capture The True Meaning Of "Representation"?, James Thomas Tucker

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article explores whether alternative voting systems are compatible with the meaning of representation in the United States. Part II begins by examining the role of geographical representation and the effect it has on the ability of individuals and groups of voters to give or withhold their consent. Part III follows this inquiry by assessing the relationship between representatives and constituents under majoritarian and proportional systems to determine the consequences of moving away from geographical representation towards models designed to enhance opportunities for all voters to choose winning candidates. A description of what a "majority" is and when and how …

The Boundaries Of Private Property, Michael A. Heller

Articles

If your house and fields are worth more separately, divide them; if you want to leave a ring to your child now and grandchild later, split the ownership in a trust. The American law of property encourages owners to subdivide resources freely. Hidden within the law, however, is a boundary principle that limits the right to subdivide private property into wasteful fragments. While people often create wealth when they break up and recombine property in novel ways, owners may make mistakes, or their self-interest may clash with social welfare. Property law responds with diverse doctrines that prevent and abolish excessive …

Jurisdiction In Cyberspace: A Theory Of International Spaces, Darrel C. Menthe

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Unfortunately, when the law confronts cyberspace the usual mode of analysis is analogy, asking not "What is cyberspace?" but "What is cyberspace like?" The answers are varied: a glorified telephone, a bookstore, a bulletin board. I propose that we look at cyberspace not in these prosaic terms, but rather through the lens of international law in order to give cyberspace meaning in our jurisprudence. The thesis of this paper is that there exists in international law a type of territory which I call "international space." Currently there are three such international spaces: Antarctica, outer space, and the high seas. For …

The Tragedy Of The Anticommons: Property In The Transition From Marx To Markets, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Why are many storefronts in Moscow empty, while street kiosks in front are full of goods? In this Article, Professor Heller develops a theory of anticommons property to help explain the puzzle of empty storefronts and full kiosks. Anticommons property can be understood as the mirror image of commons property. By definition, in a commons, multiple owners are each endowed with the privilege to use a given resource, and no one has the right to exclude another When too many owners hold such privileges of use, the resource is prone to overuse - a tragedy of the commons. Depleted fisheries …

Sanctuary, Redlight Districts, And Washington, D.C.: Some Observations On Neuman's Anomalous Zones (Symposium: Surveying Law And Borders), William I. Miller

Articles

The claim is often made that boundaries obviate disputes if they are clear. But boundaries are inseparable from disputes; they seem to invite them as much as obviate them. Note how natural the collocations "disputed boundary" and "boundary dispute" are. The conventional view that one hears a lot in law schools is that once a bright line is drawn then a boundary is "settled." But that supposes that a clear boundary need not be defended or continually justified or that internal changes in the entity it circumscribes and in some ways defines do not affect the integrity of the boundary. …

Why Redraw The Map Of Africa: A Moral And Legal Inquiry, Makau Wa Mutua

Michigan Journal of International Law

The author argues in this Article that the post-colonial state, the uncritical successor of the colonial state, is doomed because it lacks basic moral legitimacy. Its normative and territorial construction on the African colonial state, itself a legal and moral nullity, is the fundamental reason for its failure. The author argues that, at independence, the West decolonized the colonial state, not the African peoples subject to it. In other words, the right to self-determination was exercised not by the victims of colonization but their victimizers, the elites who control the international state system.

Helpless Giants: The National Parks And The Regulation Of Private Lands, Joseph L. Sax

Michigan Law Review

While intrusive private activities have increased all around them, park managers have stood by nervously, sensing that they were caring for helpless giants. The Park Service is aware that Congress has given it very little explicit authority to regulate private lands, but underlying Park Service hesitancy to act is a more profound concern about the constitutional power of the federal government to control private land uses near and within the parks. These constitutional doubts, though largely misconceived, arise out of a complex set of issues that need to be clarified. This article first describes current administrative practice and existing legislation …

Condemnation Blight And The Abutting Landowner, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This note will discuss the plight of abutting landowners, and explore various legal theories that may provide them with some recovery against the government units involved. Because most of the theories offer only limited possibilities of recovery, the final section of the note will argue for the creation of a more appropriate remedy.

International Political Questions In The National Courts, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

"Much has been made of the principle, in England and America, that international law is part of the national law to be applied by national courts in appropriate circumstances. As Mr. Justice Gray has expressed it, in the Paquete Habana: 'International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as question of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination...'

This principle is useful, where it is applicable, but it is subject to limitations which are sometimes inadequately appreciated ..."

International Extradition, Henry W. Rogers

Articles

It is a well-established principle of law that criminal prosecutions are local and not transitory. A wrong-doer whose wrong consists in a civil injury, or arises out of a breach of contract, can ordinarily be required to answer for the wrong done wherever he may be found. But a different principle is applied to the case of one who has committed a crime. As one nation does not enforce the penal laws of another, and as the process of the courts of a state can confer no authority beyond its own territorial limits, punishment can be avoided by escaping from …