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Full-Text Articles in Law
Two Decades Of Laws And Practice Around Screen Scraping In The Common Law World And Its Open Banking Watershed Moment, Han-Wei Liu
Two Decades Of Laws And Practice Around Screen Scraping In The Common Law World And Its Open Banking Watershed Moment, Han-Wei Liu
Washington International Law Journal
Screen scraping—a technique using an agent to collect, parse, and organize data from the web in an automated manner—has found countless applications over the past two decades. It is now employed everywhere, from targeted advertising, price aggregation, budgeting apps, website preservation, academic research, and journalism, to name a few. However, this tool has raised enormous controversy in the age of big data. This article takes a comparative law approach to explore two sets of analytical issues in three common law jurisdictions, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As the first step, this article maps out the trajectory of …
Crouching Tigers And Hidden Dragons On The Great Wall Street: Decoding The Corporate Goverance Of Chinese Commercial Banks, Yueh-Ping (Alex) Yang
Crouching Tigers And Hidden Dragons On The Great Wall Street: Decoding The Corporate Goverance Of Chinese Commercial Banks, Yueh-Ping (Alex) Yang
Washington International Law Journal
As China’s economic influence on the world grows, its system of state capitalism is likewise receiving increasing scrutiny. Behind the state capitalism, China’s banking sector, the “Great Wall Street”—parallel to the “Wall Street” in the United States—plays a fundamental role in financing and supporting China’s economy. Contemporary studies of China’s state capitalism, however, focus mainly on Chinese state-owned enterprises, leaving less attention specific to China’s state-owned banking sector which adopts a rather different corporate governance practice. In this paper, I conduct a comprehensive and critical review of the bank governance practice in China. Statutorily, Chinese commercial banks generally follow corporate …
Asean Investment Treaties, Rcep, And Cptpp: Regional Strengths, Norms, Institutions, And Politics, Diane A. Desierto
Asean Investment Treaties, Rcep, And Cptpp: Regional Strengths, Norms, Institutions, And Politics, Diane A. Desierto
Washington International Law Journal
Southeast Asia attracts foreign investment more rapidly than elsewhere in the world, including China. Southeast Asia’s evolving regional strategies, norms, institutions, and politics for investment governance should be of considerable interest to global decision-makers. This Article compares evolving investment treaty strategies and norms between the regional investment treaties of: (1) the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (“ASEAN”); (2) the latest draft investment chapter of the China-led sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (“RCEP”), to which all ten ASEAN Member States are also negotiating parties; and (3) some features of the current draft investment chapter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (now renamed the …
Acts Of Financial Distress In The Eu: Is The Eu To Blame?, Venetia Argyropoulou
Acts Of Financial Distress In The Eu: Is The Eu To Blame?, Venetia Argyropoulou
Washington International Law Journal
This Article seeks to determine if there is a legal basis for European Union (“EU”) Institutions to be held accountable for measures taken by an EU Member State in cases of financial distress. The Article begins by exploring the concept of sovereignty and then evaluates the limitations placed on state sovereignty by participation in the EU. Next, it explores the definitions of economic coercion and countermeasures and considers whether the actions taken by EU institutions in the context of the Cyprus banking haircut would satisfy either of these definitions. Lastly, this Article studies whether EU law can provide a basis …
Arbitrage For Property Rights: How Foreign Investors Create Substitutes For Property Institutions In China, Weitseng Chen
Arbitrage For Property Rights: How Foreign Investors Create Substitutes For Property Institutions In China, Weitseng Chen
Washington International Law Journal
This article revisits the prevailing wisdom regarding property rights based on empirical research on the behavior of foreign investors in China. The Property Law did not exist in China until 2007—four years after China replaced the United States as the most popular foreign direct investment destination worldwide. This seems to contradict the conventional wisdom about the indispensable role of property rights in economic growth. This article argues that China’s experiences in fact do not overrule the orthodox view, but rather shed light on the evolution of the regulatory property regime. Property rights still matter in China, but the structure of …
Foreigners In Burma: A Framework For Responsible Investment, Rachel E. Ryon
Foreigners In Burma: A Framework For Responsible Investment, Rachel E. Ryon
Washington International Law Journal
Burma is hailed as a great democratic success story: a once-rogue nation holding elections, releasing political prisoners, and promising human rights reforms. The people elected to Parliament Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the democratic movement who was under house arrest for more than twenty years. The world responded with applause and open pocketbooks. In April of 2012, Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, asked members to lift their sanctions on the formerly “rogue” nation and begin investing. But for a resource-rich country with a long track record of corruption, this flood of foreign investment will likely …
Cloudy Weather, With Occasional Sunshine: Consumer Loans, The Legislature, And The Supreme Court Of Japan, Shigenori Matsui
Cloudy Weather, With Occasional Sunshine: Consumer Loans, The Legislature, And The Supreme Court Of Japan, Shigenori Matsui
Washington International Law Journal
The Supreme Court of Japan, despite its well-known passive and conservative stance towards constitutional adjudication, occasionally shows quite a creative and liberal attitude. Recently, the Supreme Court of Japan has shown this attitude in its development of pro-consumer jurisprudence involving consumer loan cases. This development is still more noteworthy because the Supreme Court of Japan ignored the legislature’s intent to overturn its previous judgments and practically wiped out a statutory provision enacted by the legislature. As a result of this development, millions of consumers could demand refunds from consumer loan companies, and consumer loan companies went into serious financial troubles, …
China's Foreign Invested Partnership Enterprise Law: The Lifeless Or Sleeping Dragon?, Samuel H. Shaddox
China's Foreign Invested Partnership Enterprise Law: The Lifeless Or Sleeping Dragon?, Samuel H. Shaddox
Washington International Law Journal
Investors and the Chinese government tout the March 2010 authorization of the Foreign Invested Partnership as an exciting new method for foreign investment in China. However, this comment argues that the Foreign Invested Partnership is not likely to become a vibrant short or long-term platform for foreign direct investment. The historical trends of China’s three other vehicles for foreign direct investment from 1979 to the present provide two key conclusions. First, foreign investors will not utilize Foreign Invested Partnerships until they receive detailed implementing regulations from China’s central government. Second, support or restrictions from the Chinese government can drive or …
Alternative Dispute Resolution Design In Financial Markets—Some More Equal Than Others: Hong Kong's Proposed Financial Dispute Resolution Center In The Context Of The Experience In The United Kingdom, United States, Australia, And Singapore, Shahla F. Ali, Antonio Da Roza
Alternative Dispute Resolution Design In Financial Markets—Some More Equal Than Others: Hong Kong's Proposed Financial Dispute Resolution Center In The Context Of The Experience In The United Kingdom, United States, Australia, And Singapore, Shahla F. Ali, Antonio Da Roza
Washington International Law Journal
Systems of financial dispute resolution currently operate in most major financial centers throughout the world. As such systems expand and develop to address a growing number of finance-related disputes, they must inevitably address the question of their role and function in financial market regulation. Such questions are rooted in the larger socio-legal dispute processing debate examining how institutional dispute resolution mechanisms effectively regulate the repeat player knowledge/power gap through appropriate policies and procedures. Using the example of Hong Kong in comparison with financial dispute resolution models currently in existence in the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, and the United States, this …
Legal Compliance And Korea's Financial Services Market: A Strategic Approach, Young-Cheol Jeong
Legal Compliance And Korea's Financial Services Market: A Strategic Approach, Young-Cheol Jeong
Washington International Law Journal
The purpose of this paper is to improve the compliance level in the Korean financial services market by proposing a more systematic approach to economic crimes. As one of the most important capital markets in Asia, the Korean financial services market has weathered well both the hardship of the Asian financial crisis and the challenges of the Great Recession. Thus, its policy directions and experience are valuable to other burgeoning capital markets around the world. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the compliance system in the Korean financial services market. Based on a literature review, this paper analyzes …
Bank Privitization In Vietnam: Examining Changes To Management In Vietnam's New Banking Law, Decree No. 59/2009/Nd-Cp, George B. Radics
Bank Privitization In Vietnam: Examining Changes To Management In Vietnam's New Banking Law, Decree No. 59/2009/Nd-Cp, George B. Radics
Washington International Law Journal
Due to its WTO obligations, by 2010 Vietnam must open its banking system to the world. As a result, the nation attempted to drastically modernize its state owned banks through partial privatization. This partial privatization, locally translated as equitization, proposed serious challenges to the existing legal infrastructure facilitating banks. To cope with these new challenges, in September 2009, Vietnam’s new banking law, Decree 59/2009/ND-CP, was passed. An important change in the new banking law is its stricter regulation on the qualifications of managers. It is suspected that such regulation signals the nation’s resistance to surrender control over its banks and …
Electronic Money And The Law: Legal Realities And Future Challenges, Nobuhiko Sugiura, Jean J. Luyat
Electronic Money And The Law: Legal Realities And Future Challenges, Nobuhiko Sugiura, Jean J. Luyat
Washington International Law Journal
The following is a translation of Electronic Money and the Law: Legal Realities and Future Challenges, an essay written by Professor Nobuhiko Sugiura in the August 1, 2008 issue of the Japanese periodical Jurisuto. Stored-value cards are growing rapidly in urban areas in Japan, to a degree where they are beginning to challenge cash as a primary method of payment. In this article, Professor Sugiura outlines the growth of stored-value cards, how stored-value cards should be defined, legal structures that currently regulate stored-value cards, and how growth and technological development are likely to affect that legal structure. As Japan’s takes …
A Tale Of Regulation In The European Union And Japan: Does Characterizing The Business Of Stored-Value Cards As A Financial Activity Impact Its Development?, Jean J. Luyat
Washington International Law Journal
The use of stored-value cards is growing rapidly in urban areas in Japan and gaining acceptance as a major means of payment. While institutional and cultural factors as well as business strategies go far in explaining the rapid growth of stored-value cards in Japan, regulation has also played an important role in enabling their use. In Japan, the regulation of stored-value cards has been mostly left to the Prepaid Card Law, which provides a comparatively simple regulatory framework with flexible capital requirements. The European Union (“EU”) and France provide a compelling counter-example to Japan; the EU has pursued a different …
Japan And The Moneylenders—Activist Courts And Substantive Justice, Andrew M. Pardieck
Japan And The Moneylenders—Activist Courts And Substantive Justice, Andrew M. Pardieck
Washington International Law Journal
Problems with sub-prime loans roiled financial markets worldwide in 2007 and brought renewed attention to predatory lending practices by loan brokers in the United States. Questionable lending practices, however, plague consumer financial markets worldwide, including one of the largest, found in Japan. This Article addresses the Japanese response to systemic problems in its consumer finance market. Over the last forty years, the judiciary has led and the Diet followed. Most recently, in 2006, the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that turned the single most important earnings driver for the consumer finance industry into dead letter law. The …
Money For Nothing, Your Crisis For Free?: A Comparative Analysis Of Consumer Credit Policies For Post-1997 South Korea And Thailand, Jasper Kim, Kemavit Bhangananda
Money For Nothing, Your Crisis For Free?: A Comparative Analysis Of Consumer Credit Policies For Post-1997 South Korea And Thailand, Jasper Kim, Kemavit Bhangananda
Washington International Law Journal
Both the South Korean and Thai governments encouraged consumer credit card usage to boost consumer spending and reinvigorate the national economy following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Today, almost a decade following the crisis, the authors provide a comparative analysis of how policymakers in both South Korea and Thailand have attempted to regulate the rapid upsurge in consumer credit card debt in their respective economies. This Article also notes some of the benefits and risks of the approaches taken by the South Korean and Thai governments, using as focal points the South Korean government’s Individual Debtor Rehabilitation Act, a personal …
Vietnam's Decree On Microfinance: A Flawed Attempt To Create An Enabling Legal Environment For Microfinance, Elin M. King
Vietnam's Decree On Microfinance: A Flawed Attempt To Create An Enabling Legal Environment For Microfinance, Elin M. King
Washington International Law Journal
Despite its increasing as a development tool microfinance still faces significant barriers in reaching the poorest of the poor. Microfinance programs often respond well to short-term needs but are not designed to handle the long-term struggles faced by lending institutions. To resolve these problems, many in the microfinance field have begun to tout the concept of creating “enabling” legal and regulatory frameworks. Such an enabling environment would ideally eliminate unreasonable barriers to entry into the field, encourage innovation, and reinforce industry best practices. An enabling regulatory scheme could also increase legal certainty, encourage more investors to enter the field and …
Comparing Foreign Investment In China, Post-Wto Accession, With Foreign Investment In The United States, Post-9/11, Jordan Brandt
Comparing Foreign Investment In China, Post-Wto Accession, With Foreign Investment In The United States, Post-9/11, Jordan Brandt
Washington International Law Journal
Ever since China instituted its “open-door policy” (gai ge kai fang) in 1978, the historically autarkic and largely mysterious country has morphed through external interactions with foreign countries and corporations into a hotbed for foreign investment activity. This foreign investment activity has forever changed China’s standing in the global community; today, China stands firm and elevated amongst the ranks of the globalized community as one of the leaders in attracting foreign investment. This article examines China’s rise as an economic power through the use of its foreign investment laws. It then compares the experience of China, a communist …
Tax Treatments For Distressed Bank Loans: A Comparative Study Of The United States And Japanese Legal Systems, Yo Ota
Washington International Law Journal
A number of commentators in Japan have argued that tax treatments for distressed bank loans seem to be more generous in Japan than in the United States, and that, in contrast to Japan, the United States does not allow any deduction for loan loss reserves. However, such arguments have not been based upon a careful analysis of case law and actual tax authority practices. This Article presents a comparative study of the tax treatments for distressed bank loans in the United States and Japan. It analyzes corporate income tax legislation, administrative practices and case law in the 1980s and 1990s …
Microfinance And Poverty Alleviation: Lessons From Indonesia's Village Banking System, Yoko Miyashita
Microfinance And Poverty Alleviation: Lessons From Indonesia's Village Banking System, Yoko Miyashita
Washington International Law Journal
Indonesia needs an aggressive poverty reduction strategy to counter the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which has propelled millions of its citizens into poverty. Microfinance is a proven method of reducing poverty and has been successfully used within Indonesia in government-supported programs. In addition to continuing its state-run microfinance programs, Indonesia should support increased non-governmental organization ("NGO") participation in microfinance programs by permitting NGOs to conduct the full range of activities of a state-run microfinance program. Such a move would help to ensure that microfinance services reach people with the least access to the formal financial sector.
China's Gatt Bid: Why All The Fuss About Currency Controls, Chris Brown
China's Gatt Bid: Why All The Fuss About Currency Controls, Chris Brown
Washington International Law Journal
China did not succeed in its bid to join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) during the Uruguay Round. A key stumbling block was China's mechanism of exchange rate controls. From the mid-1980s to the end of 1993, China used a dual-rate currency mechanism, administering these rates through a loose network of about 100 exchange centers ("swap centers"). The swap centers helped to create partial convertibility of the Chinese currency and were instrumental in creating incentives for China's exporters and in attracting foreign investment. However, the swap centers also caused trade conflicts with the U.S. and within GATT. …
Introduction To The Financial System And Securities & Exchange System Reform Act In Japan, Hiroshi Naka, Akio Nakamura, Atsushi Yamashita, Scott Siegler
Introduction To The Financial System And Securities & Exchange System Reform Act In Japan, Hiroshi Naka, Akio Nakamura, Atsushi Yamashita, Scott Siegler
Washington International Law Journal
This translation of an original Japanese language work, by Hiroshi Naka and Akio Nakamura, both of the Japanese Ministry of Finance, details the reforms of Japan's financial and securities & exchange system made under the recently enacted System Reform Act. The major reforms under the Act include: (1) altering the "Glass Steagall" rule (the separation of securities business and banking business) in Japan so that banks and securities companies can engage in each other's business through their subsidiaries; (2) extending securities regulations to some new types of structured finance; (3) amending public offering provisions and providing new articles for private …