Law Commons^™

Noneconomic Objectives, Global Value Chains And International Cooperation, Bernard M. Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis, Douglas R. Nelson

Faculty Scholarship

Systemic conflicts increasingly affect the global value chains (GVCs) underpinning globalization by creating policy uncertainty and politicizing trade and investment decisions. Unilateral policies to attain competitiveness and noneconomic objectives (NEOs), including national security, create incentives for international cooperation to attenuate policy spillovers. Recent initiatives seeking to do so are organized around supply chain governance and need not be anchored in trade agreements. Whether such cooperation is feasible and can be designed to be effective in realizing NEOs is unclear. Plurilateral GVC-centered cooperation offers a potential path for states to pursue NEOs and reduce policy uncertainty for international business. Research offers …

Transnational Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Fiduciary law is expanding throughout the world.¹ It seems to be a new phenomenon, but in reality, it is not. Fiduciary law is ancient. It existed centuries ago in Mesopotamia, ² Rome, ³ Egypt,⁴ Greece,⁵ as well as in Jewish ⁶ and Christian laws.⁷ Fiduciary duties arguably developed later in Great Britain when master landlords left for the holy land on religious crusades and had to rely on others to manage their estates.⁸ The ancient rules, such as those found in agency law in Mesopotamia, may not have been as sophisticated as the current ones-such …

Even Some International Law Is Local: Implementation Of Treaties Through Subnational Mechanisms, Charlotte Ku, William H. Henning, David P. Stewart, Paul F. Diehl

Faculty Scholarship

Multilateral treaties today rarely touch on subjects where there is no domestic law in the United States, In the U.S. federal system, this domestic law may not be national law, but law of the constituent States of the United States. However, in light of the U.S. Constitution Article VI, treaties in their domestic application unavoidably federalize the subjects they address. The most sensitive issues arise when a treaty focuses on matters primarily or exclusively dealt with in the United States at the State or local level. Although U.S. practice allows for some flexibility to accommodate State/local interests, the federal government …

Unraveling The Tax Treaty, Rebecca Kysar

Faculty Scholarship

Coordination among nations over the taxation of international transactions rests on a network of some 2,000 bilateral double tax treaties. The double tax treaty is, in many ways, the roots of the international system of taxation. That system, however, is in upheaval in the face of globalization, technological advances, taxpayer abuse, and shifting political tides. In the academic literature, however, scrutiny of tax treaties is largely confined to the albeit important question of whether tax treaties are beneficial for developing countries. Surprisingly little consideration has been paid to whether developed countries, like the United States, should continue to sign tax …

Building A Good Jobs Economy, Dani Rodrik, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional models are failing throughout the world. In the developed world, the welfare state-compensation model has been in retrenchment for some time, and the drawbacks of the neoliberal conception that has superseded it are increasingly evident. Yet there is no compelling alternative on offer. In the developing world, the conventional, tried-and-tested model of industrialization has run out of steam. In both sets of societies a combination of technological and economic forces (in particular, globalization) is creating or exacerbating productive/technological dualism, with a segment of advanced production in metropolitan areas that thrives on the uncertainty generated by the knowledge economy co-existing …

Sovereignty And Complex Interdependence: Some Surprising Indications Of Their Compatibility, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

Even as democratic sovereignty and globalization are increasingly seen as incompatible in theory, this chapter argues that, in some important realms, they are proving compatible in practice. As tariffs have fallen to negligible levels, trade agreements among rich countries have come to focus on reconciling regulatory differences. In many sectors, novel forms of cooperation have emerged that allow trade partners deliberately to investigate and learn from one another’s practices, eventually recognizing the equivalence of regimes that are not strictly identical — and in the process extending domestic political oversight to relations among states while often heightening domestic accountability. The emergent …

Democratic Policing Before The Due Process Revolution, Sarah Seo

Faculty Scholarship

According to prevailing interpretations of the Warren Court’s Due Process Revolution, the Supreme Court constitutionalized criminal procedure to constrain the discretion of individual officers. These narratives, however, fail to account for the Court’s decisions during that revolutionary period that enabled discretionary policing. Instead of beginning with the Warren Court, this Essay looks to the legal culture before the Due Process Revolution to provide a more coherent synthesis of the Court’s criminal procedure decisions. It reconstructs that culture by analyzing the prominent criminal law scholar Jerome Hall’s public lectures, Police and Law in a Democratic Society, which he delivered in 1952 …

Regulatory Cooperation In International Trade And Its Transformative Effects On Executive Power, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

As international trade receives the brunt of local discontent with globalization trends and recent changes by the Trump administration have put into question the viability of such trade arrangements moving forward, there has been a clear trend in using international trade fora for managing regulatory barriers on economic development. This paper will discuss this recent trend in international trade toward increased regulatory cooperation through the creation of formalized transnational regulatory bodies, such as the U.S.-EU Regulatory Cooperation Body that was being discussed in the TTIP negotiations and comparable ones in the Canadian-EU Trade Agreement as well as U.S.-Mexico and U.S.- …

“One Size Can Fit All” – On The Mass Production Of Legal Transplants, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Law reformers like the World Bank sometimes suggest that optimal legal rules and institutions can be recognized and then be recommended for law reform in every country in the world. Comparative lawyers have long been skeptical of such views. They point out that both laws and social problems are context-specific. What works in one context may fail in another. Instead of “one size fits all,” they suggest tailormade solutions.

I challenge this view. Drawing on a comparison with IKEA’s global marketing strategy, I suggest that “one size fits all” can sometimes be not only a successful law reform strategy, but …

Globalization And Law: Law Beyond The State, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The chapter provides an introduction into law and globalization for sociolegal studies. Instead of treating globalization as an external factor that impacts the law, globalization and law are here viewed as intertwined. I suggest that three types of globalization should be distinguished—globalization as empirical phenomenon, globalization as theory, and globalization as ideology. I go on to discuss one central theme of globalization, namely in what way society, and therefore law, move beyond the state. This is done along the three classical elements of the state—territory, population/citizenship, and government. The role of all of these elements is shifting, suggesting we need …

Trademark Cosmopolitanism, Sonia K. Katyal

Faculty Scholarship

The world of global trademarks can be characterized in terms of three major shifts: first, a shift from national to global branding strategies; second, a shift from national and regional systems to harmonized international regimes governing trademark law; and third, a concurrent shift from local to transnational social movements that challenge branding and other corporate practices. The rise of transnational brands brings with it an attendant series of legal shifts in trademark law. Long considered the stepchild of intellectual property law, today, trademark law has morphed into a powerful global legal phenomenon, revealing a foundational shift from national and regional …

Regulating Conflicts Of Interest In Global Law Firms: Peace In Our Time?, Nancy J. Moore, Janine Griffiths-Baker

Faculty Scholarship

The phenomenon of the global law firm has transformed the face of international law practice. The practice of law has itself become global, as lawyers play their part in the growing international market for corporate and commercial services. The global expansion of legal practice has prompted several jurisdictions to consider how their own global legal service markets should be regulated. To date, only limited scholarly consideration has been given to the practicalities of regulating the day-to-day practice of law on an international scale.

This Article attempts to shed light on methods of regulating the conduct of lawyers in the context …

Implications Of Globalization For The Professional Status Of Lawyers In The United States And Elsewhere, Nancy J. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Global Problems In Domestic Courts, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

We face an increasing number of problems that are essentially global in nature because they affect the world in its entirety: global cartels, climate change, crimes against humanity; to name a few. These problems require world courts, yet world courts in the institutional sense are largely lacking. Hence, domestic courts must function, effectively, as world courts. Given the unlikelihood of effective world courts in the future, our challenge is to establish under what conditions domestic courts can play this role of world courts effectively and legitimately.

Global Law And The Environment, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores three areas in which globalization is profoundly affecting the development of a global environmental law. First, countries increasingly are borrowing law and regulatory innovations from one another to respond to common environmental problems. Although this is not an entirely new phenomenon, it is occurring at an unprecedented pace. Second, lawsuits seeking to hold companies liable for environmental harm they have caused outside their home countries are raising new questions concerning the appropriate venue for such transnational liability litigation and the standards courts should apply for enforcement of foreign judgments. Third, nongovernmental organizations are playing an increasingly important …

Baum Lecture 2010, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

As part of the Baum Lecture Series at the University of Illinois College of Law, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger delivered a lecture on September 14, 2010, on the essential role of a global free press in providing the information needed to understand the many problematic issues we face as a result of globalization. In this presentation, President Bollinger addressed the challenges of maintaining high-quality institutions of American journalism with an international reporting capacity in the face of rapidly changing market forces. He further discussed America’s interest in seeing the rise of a free and independent press in nations …

A Unified Theory Of International Law, The State, And The Individual: Transnational Legal Harmonization In The Context Of Economic And Legal Globalization, James D. Wilets

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents an original theory of international law which reconciles the norm-making processes occurring at the international, state, and individual levels. It is the central thesis of this paper that economic globalization is not happening in a vacuum, but it is rather engendering legal globalization, much in the way that centralized regulation followed trans-state economic globalization within the United States and Europe.

Traditional definitions of international law do not address this phenomenon and consider these new forms of transnational norm creation as simply exceptions to the general rule that international law is created by nation-states within the framework of …

The Mirage Of Non-State Governance, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I offer three theses, all of which are critical. First, non‑state governance is conceptually unattractive; it is a concept that makes little sense. Second, non‑state governance is empirically unattractive; meaningful non‑state governance rarely exists. Third, meaningful non‑state governance is normatively unattractive; we would rarely want it, and people postulating it usually expect the state to play an important role. However, I also have something constructive: a proposed trajectory. Talk about the state and the non‑state can only be an intermediary stage in a trajectory of a theory of governance that might lead to a new paradigm of …

Human Rights In The Emerging World Order, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Pursuing the so-called political account of human rights, this talk first explains some aspects of the relations between legal and moral rights, and between rights and interests, and then applies the analysis to provide an explanation of human rights. Using the rights to health and to education as examples, it rejects the traditional theory that takes human rights to be rights that people have in virtue of their humanity alone. But human rights are synchronically universal. They are rights which all people living today have, a feature that is a precondition of, and a result of, the fact that they …

The Globalization Of Environmental Law, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Legal systems across the globe are responding to environmental concerns in surprising new ways. As nations upgrade their environmental standards, some are transplanting law and regulatory policy innovations derived from the experience of other countries, including nations with very different legal and cultural traditions. New national, regional, and international initiatives have been undertaken both by governments and private organizations. Greater cross-border collaboration between government officials, nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations and other entities is shaping environmental policy in ways that blur traditional private/public/and domestic/international distinctions. The result has been the emergence of a kind of “global environmental law”-law that is neither …

The Emergence Of Global Environmental Law, Tseming Yang, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

With the global growth of public concern about environmental issues over the last several decades, environmental legal norms have become increasingly internationalized. This development has been reflected both in the surge of international environmental agreements as well as the growth and increased sophistication of national environmental legal systems around the world. The result is the emergence of a set of legal principles and norms regarding the environment, such that one can arguably describe it as a body of law. After exploring the diverse forces that are contributing to the emergence of what we call “global environmental law,” this Article considers …

"Think Glocal, Act Glocal": The Praxis Of Social Justice Lawyering In The Global Era, Lauren Carasik

Faculty Scholarship

Millions of people in the world struggle to survive in extreme economic deprivation, and deteriorating conditions have highlighted the failure of international development policies to "lift all boats." The complex and globalized context of poverty compels social justice lawyers to innovate transnational advocacy strategies, expanding human rights norms as part of those efforts. This Article suggests a cross-border, collaborative advocacy model for clinical education. The model is premised on theories of global interconnectedness that integrate progressive lawyering, social change theory and anti-poverty work in the global era, thereby contributing to the discourse about and praxis of combating international economic injustice. …

The Race To The Center And Other Lessons Of Globalization, Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Faculty Scholarship

An Interview with Kenta Tsuda, New York, NY, 1 June 2006.

]agdish Bhagwati is a professor of economics and law at Columbia University and senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. His publications include The Economics of Underdeveloped Countries and In Defense of Globalization. He is the founder of the Journal of International Economics and Economics & Politics.

Private Law And State-Making In The Age Of Globalization, Daniela Caruso

Faculty Scholarship

The rise of post-national entities, such as the institutions of the European Union and of free-trade regimes, bears no obvious relation to the traditional pillars of western private law (mostly contracts, torts, and property doctrines). The claim of this article is that the global diffusion of private law discourse contributes significantly to the emergence of new centers of authority in the global arena. The article tests the impact of private law arguments in three contexts - the growing legitimacy of regional human rights adjudication, the consolidation of the institutions of the European Union, and the higher binding force of international …

Law And Public Health: Beyond Emergency Preparedness, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines three questions: What is public health? What is public health law? What roles can lawyers play in public health? It first describes the breadth of public health, highlighting six trends shaping its future: social determinants of health; synergy between medicine and public health; shifts in focus from external (e.g., environmental and social) to internal (behavioral) risks to health; federalization of public health law; globalization of health risks and responses; and bioterrorism. Because the domains of law that apply to public health are equally broad, the Article next offers a conceptual framework for identifying the types of laws …

Globalizing Savigny: The State In Savigny’S Private International Law, And The Challenge Of Europeanization And Globalization, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

How can conflict of laws respond to the challenges from globalization? Some argue that state-based approaches like governmental interest analysis are inadequate, and advocate a return to the approach taken by the German scholar Savigny in the 19th century. The article shows that the assumption is correct: state-based approaches have indeed become problematic. However, a return to Savigny's approach will not help: While Savigny's approach is multilateral and pays little regard to governmental interest, closer analysis reveals how central the state is to his theory. The consequences are shown in an analysis of a recent European case. It follows that …

The Globalization Of Private Knowledge Goods And The Privatization Of Global Public Goods, Jerome H. Reichman, Keith H. Maskus

Faculty Scholarship

Global trade and investment have become increasingly liberalized in recent decades. This liberalization has lately been accompanied by substantive new requirements for strong minimum standards of intellectual property (IP) protection, which moves the world economy toward harmonized private rights in knowledge goods. While this trend may have beneficial impacts in terms of innovation and technology diffusion, such impacts would not be evenly distributed across countries. Deep questions also arise about whether such globalization of rights to information will raise roadblocks to the national and international provision of such public goods as environmental protection, public health, education, and scientific advance. This …

Labor And Finance As Inevitably Transnational: Globalization Demands A Sophisticated And Transnational Lens, Timothy A. Canova, Claire Moore Dickerson, Katherine V.W. Stone

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Disorders Of Unrestricted Capital Mobility, And The Limits Of The Orthodox Imagination, Timothy A. Canova

Faculty Scholarship

This book review provides a critique of Robert Solomon's' Money on the Move: The Revolution in International Finance since 1980'. According to the reviewer, Solomon has written a highly descriptive account of some of the major developments in global financial markets over the past two decades. His impressive compilation of events is couched in an objective, value-neutral narrative, thereby suggesting that the tide of orthodox policy reforms is as inevitable as the sun rising. But lurking just beneath the surface are the usual neoclassical assumptions that one might expect of a former chief international economist of the Federal Reserve Board: …

Reforming Labor Law For The New Century, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

The two articles that follow are the first published fruit of a conversation that was initiated in 1998 under the auspices of "Labor Law Reform for Developed Countries in the 21st Century," several years of conferences leading to the May 2000 Tokyo Conference of the International Industrial Relations Association. This project has had generous support from the Center for Global Partnership of the Japan Foundation and from the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law at Columbia Law School.

The participants have been labor law professors from Europe, Japan, and the United States. The group has focused its research and …