Law Commons^™

Promises Unfulfilled: How Investment Arbitration Tribunals Mishandle Corruption Claims And Undermine International Development, Andrew T. Bulovsky

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, the investment-arbitration and anti-corruption regimes have been in tension. Investment tribunals have jurisdiction to arbitrate disputes between investors and host states under international treaties that provide substantive protections for private investments. But these tribunals will typically decline to exercise jurisdiction over a dispute if the host state asserts that corruption tainted the investment. When tribunals close their doors to ag-grieved investors, tribunals increase the risks for investors and thus raise the cost of international investment. At the same time, the decision to decline jurisdiction creates a perverse incentive for host states to turn a blind eye to …

Making Treaty Implementation More Like Statutory Implementation, Jean Galbraith

Michigan Law Review

Both statutes and treaties are the “supreme law of the land,” and yet quite different practices have developed with respect to their implementation. For statutes, all three branches have embraced the development of administrative law, which allows the executive branch to translate broad statutory directives into enforceable obligations. But for treaties, there is a far more cumbersome process. Unless a treaty provision contains language that courts interpret to be directly enforceable, they will deem it to require implementing legislation from Congress. This Article explores and challenges the perplexing disparity between the administration of statutes and treaties. It shows that the …

Congress's International Legal Discourse, Kevin L. Cope

Michigan Law Review

Despite Congress’s important role in enforcing U.S. international law obligations, the relevant existing literature largely ignores the branch. This omission may stem partly from the belief, common among both academics and lawyers, that Congress is generally unsympathetic to or ignorant of international law. Under this conventional wisdom, members of Congress would rarely if ever imply that international law norms should impact otherwise desirable domestic legislation. Using an original dataset comprising thirty years of legislative histories of pertinent federal statutes, this Article questions and tests that view. The evidence refutes the conventional wisdom. It shows instead that, in legislative debates over …

Contextualing Regimes: Institutionalization As A Response To The Limits Of Interpretation And Policy Engineering, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon

Michigan Law Review

When legal language and the effects of public intervention are indeterminate, generalist lawmakers (legislatures, courts, top-level administrators) often rely on the normative output of contextualizing regimes-institutions that structure deliberative engagement by stakeholders and articulate the resulting understanding. Examples include the familiar practices of delegation and deference to administrative agencies in public law and to trade associations in private law. We argue that resorting to contextualizing regimes is becoming increasingly common across a broad range of issues and that the structure of emerging regimes is evolving away from the well-studied agency and trade association examples. The newer regimes mix public and …

Climate Justice, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

Eric Posner and David Weisbach take the threat of climate change seriously. Their book Climate Change Justice offers policy prescriptions that deserve serious attention. While the authors adopt the framework of conventional welfare economics, they show a willingness to engage with noneconomic perspectives, which softens their conclusions. Although they are right to see a risk that overly aggressive ethical claims could derail international agreement on restricting greenhouse gases, their analysis makes climate justice too marginal to climate policy. The developed world does have a special responsibility for the current climate problem, and we should be willing both to agree to …

Rational Choice, Reputation, And Human Rights Treaties, Alex Geisinger, Michael Ashley Stein

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this Review sets forth Guzman's general theory of international law with specific consideration of the way reputation influences state behavior. Part II then tests Guzman's overarching thesis by applying it to human rights treaties and concludes that explaining states' entry into human rights treaties requires a broader conception of reputation than Rational Choice allows.

Peace Through Law? The Failure Of A Noble Experiment, Robert J. Delahunty, John C. Yoo

Michigan Law Review

Ever since its publication in 1929, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front has been regarded as a landmark of antiwar literature. Appearing a decade after the end of the First World War, the novel became a literary sensation almost overnight. Within a year of publication, it had been translated into twenty languages, including Chinese, and by April 1930, sales for twelve of the twenty editions stood at 2.5 million. Remarque was reputed to have the largest readership in the world. Hollywood took note, and an equally successful film appeared in 1930. The success of the novel was …

Don't Cross The Streams: Past And Present Overstatement Of Customary International Law In Connection With Conventional Fair And Equitable Treatment Obligations, Theodore Kill

Michigan Law Review

The obligation to provide fair and equitable treatment to foreign investors and investments has existed as a concept of international economic law at least since the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations. The fair and equitable treatment provision is a key protection contained in the vast majority of modern bilateral investment treaties. Tribunals adjudicating alleged breaches of these fair and equitable treatment provisions have not arrived at a uniform interpretation of the term. As a threshold issue, however each tribunal must address the question of whether a state's obligations under a given treaty's fair and equitable treatment provision will …

Hacking Into International Humanitarian Law: The Principles Of Distinction And Neutrality In The Age Of Cyber Warfare, Jeffrey T.G. Kelsey

Michigan Law Review

Cyber warfare is an emerging form of warfare not explicitly addressed by existing international law. While most agree that legal restrictions should apply to cyber warfare, the international community has yet to reach consensus on how international humanitarian law ("IHL") applies to this new form of conflict. After providing an overview of the global Internet structure and outlining several cyber warfare scenarios, this Note argues that violations of the traditional principles of distinction and neutrality are more likely to occur in cyber warfare than in conventional warfare. States have strong incentives to engage in prohibited cyber attacks, despite the risk …

Prologue To A Voluntarist War Convention, Robert D. Sloane

Michigan Law Review

This Article attempts to identify and clarify what is genuinely new about the "new paradigm" of armed conflict after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Assuming that sound policy counsels treating certain aspects of the global struggle against modern transnational terrorist networks within the legal rubric of war, this Article stresses that the principal challenge such networks pose is that they require international humanitarian law, somewhat incongruously, to graft conventions-in both the formal and informal senses of that word-onto an unconventional form of organized violence. Furthermore, this process occurs in a context in which one diffuse "party" to the conflict …

International Law And Constitutional Interpretation: The Commander In Chief Clause Reconsidered, Ingrid Brunk Wuerth

Michigan Law Review

The Commander in Chief Clause is a difficult, underexplored area of constitutional interpretation. It is also a context in which international law is often mentioned, but not fully defended, as a possible method of interpreting the Constitution. This Article analyzes why the Commander in Chief Clause is difficult and argues that international law helps resolve some of the problems that the Clause presents. Because of weaknesses in originalist analysis, changes over time, and lack of judicial competence in military matters, the Court and commentators have relied on second-order interpretive norms like congressional authorization and executive branch practice in interpreting the …

Executive Power Essentialism And Foreign Affairs, Curtis A. Bradley, Martin S. Flaherty

Michigan Law Review

Conflict abroad almost always enhances executive power at home. This expectation has held true at least since the constitutions of antiquity. It holds no less true for modern constitutions, including the Constitution of the United States. Constitutional arguments for executive power likewise escalate with increased perceptions of foreign threat. It is therefore hardly surprising that broad assertions of presidential power have become commonplace after the events of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing war on international terrorism. One perennial weapon in the executive arsenal is the so-called "Vesting Clause" of Article II of the Constitution. This clause, which provides that …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.

International Law As A Process, Louis B. Sohn

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It by Rosalyn Higgins

The Uncitral Framework For Arbitration In Contemporary Perspective, Alyssa A. Grikscheit

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The UNCITRAL Framework for Arbitration in Contemporary Perspective by Isaak I. Dore

Are We Compatible?: Current European Community Law On The Compatibility Of Joint Ventures With The Common Market And Possibilities For Future Development, Alyssa A. Grikscheit

Michigan Law Review

The Commission and commentators note that the potential for reform in the procedural arena is quite great. The current literature discusses the difficulties would-be venturers have in determining if their proposed venture is concentrative or cooperative and the procedural differences between notifications under the two standards.

This Note argues, however, that the substantive differences between the two standards are even more problematic than the procedural ones. Reducing the substantive differences between the two compatibility standards, short of creating a single standard that is unresponsive to the tensions between concentrative and cooperative situations, will have a beneficial impact. Similar standards of …

The Age Of Rights, Stephen D. Sencer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Age of Rights by Louis Henkin

Foreign Affairs Law And Democracy, Phillip R. Trimble

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Constitutionalism, Democracy, and Foreign Affairs by Louis Henkin

A Recommended Approach To Bail In International Extradition Cases, Jeffrey A. Hall

Michigan Law Review

This Note proposes such a consistent approach, arguing that courts in international extradition cases should focus on the accused's risk of flight rather than on the presence or absence of specific "special circumstances." Part I briefly discusses the international extradition process and outlines the important societal and individual interests at stake in the bail decision. Part II discusses the origin and evolution of the judicial approaches to bail in international extradition cases and demonstrates the inconsistency in the lower courts' treatment. Part III suggests an approach for making bail decisions in international extradition cases. It argues that the determinative factor …

The Lawful Rights Of Mankind: An Introduction To The International Legal Code Of Human Rights, Alexander W. Joel

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Lawful Rights of Mankind: An Introduction to the International Legal Code of Human Rights by Paul Sieghart

Outer Space: New Challenges To Law And Policy, Timothy J. Chorvat

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Outer Space: New Challenges to Law and Policy by J.E.S. Fawcett

The Making Of International Agreements: Congress Confronts The Executive, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Making of International Agreements: Congress Confronts the Executive by Loch K. Johnson

Effects Of International Agreements In European Community Law: Are The Dice Cast?, Jacques H.J. Bourgeois

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this contribution is to explore the extent to which the "direct effect" doctrine, developed within the Community legal system for the purpose of the relations between Community law and the Member States' law, has spilled over into the field of the relations between international law and Community law, or, to use a somewhat daring comparison, to what extent the doctrine of McCulloch v. Maryland has been applied in a Foster and Elam situation.

Direct And Indirect Judicial Control Of Community Acts In Practice: The Relation Between Articles 173 And 177 Of The Eec Treaty, Gerhard Bebr

Michigan Law Review

The European Economic Community (EEC) Treaty contains two different judicial controls over the exercise of the powers granted to the Community by the Treaty: (1) a direct control through an action in the European Court of Justice under article 173 to annul a Community act; and (2) an indirect control through reference by a national court to the Court of Justice under article 177 to review the validity of a Community act. Each of . these controls is designed to ensure the legal exercise of power by Community institutions. In form, however, they are quite different procedures.

The present study …

Civil Enforcement Of Eec Antitrust Law, Francis G. Jacobs

Michigan Law Review

This paper examines whether and to what extent private civil remedies are, as a matter of law, and ought to be, as a matter of policy, available in the courts of the EEC Member States for breach of the antitrust provisions of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (the Treaty of Rome). These questions are addressed in Part I. Part II sets the issues in the broader context of the enforcement of the Treaty obligations of Member States. In this way, it is hoped to elucidate the relationship between national law and Community law, and also indirectly to illuminate …

How Flexible Is Community Law? An Unusual Approach To The Concept Of "Two Speeds", Claus-Dieter Ehlermann

Michigan Law Review

The concept of "two speeds" de lege ferenda and the connected question of possible flexibility in Community law de lege lata raise a number of highly complex institutional questions that go to the very roots of the Community system. We offer the following analysis of such questions to Eric Stein, whose writing and teaching have contributed so greatly to the understanding of the Community's foundations.

The European Community And The Requirement Of A Republican Form Of Government, Jochen Abr. Frowein

Michigan Law Review

The European Community - that is, the factual entity composed of three legally separate communities which has been and still is one of the basic concerns of Eric Stein - cannot be understood without taking into account European history after 1933. As an irony of history, the stage for a new beginning was set by the man who destroyed the old Europe and who was the reason that so many academics left the "old country" for the new world. This new start was not only influenced by the determination of those Europeans who had lived through the darkness to overcome …

The Applicability Of The Ecsc-Cartel Prohibition (Article 65) During A "Manifest Crisis", Ernst-Joachim Mestmäcker

Michigan Law Review

The Commission and the Council have found that the steel industry of the Community is facing a "manifest crisis" within the meaning of article 58 of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) Treaty. Factors that have led to this crisis include structural peculiarities of the steel industry, an increase in production costs, a decrease in demand for steel and steel products, and the resulting excess capacity in steel mills. A majority of the Member States have attempted to protect their national steel industries from the economically mandated cutback in production capacity through substantial subsidization. International competition has thus degenerated, …

Prior Consultation In International Law: A Study Of State Practice, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Prior Consultation in International Law: A Study of State Practice by Frederic L. Kirgis, Jr.

More On European Community Law, Trevor Hartley

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Yearbook of European Law 1981 by F.G. Jacobs