Law Commons^™

'In A Settled Country, Everyone Must Eat': Four Questions About Transnational Private Regulation, Migration, And Migrant Work, Amar Bhatia

Articles & Book Chapters

This introduction speaks to one of the questions raised by transnational private regulation: is migration always transnational? One quick answer to this question might be ‘no’. If migration is concerned with the international movement of people, then what has been called the approach of methodological nationalism would force out the ‘trans-­‐’ and always substitute the international. Since methodological nationalism is an approach characterized by an overdue emphasis on states and their external borders as the sole arbiters for what registers as movement, then this answer would not surprise anyone. However, if we do not take a monopolistic approach to borders, …

Can Timor-Leste Rely On Its Endowments To Achieve The Strategic Development Plan Targets?, Nicolas Maennling

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Government of Timor-Leste invited the Earth Institute and CCSI to advise on the sustainable management and use of oil resources, in order to achieve higher living standards and sustainable development. One component of the project included the preparation of a sector study that assesses whether the Government can rely on agriculture, tourism and the petrochemical sectors to achieve its long term GDP growth and employment targets.

International Activity And Domestic Law, Adam I. Muchmore

Journal Articles

This invited essay explores the ways States use their domestic laws to regulate activities that cross national borders. Domestic-law enforcement decisions play an underappreciated role in the development of international regulatory policy, particularly in situations where the enforcing State's power to apply its law extraterritorially is not contested. Collective action problems suggest there will be an undersupply of enforcement decisions that promote global welfare and an oversupply of enforcement decisions that promote national welfare. These collective action problems may be mitigated in part by government networks and other forms of regulatory cooperation.

Inching Towards Consensus: An Update On The Uncitral Transparency Negotiations, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

From October 1-5, 2012, a working group of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) met in Vienna to continue work on how to ensure transparency in treaty-based investor-state arbitration. It was the working group’s fifth week-long meeting on the topic, but will not be the last. Although some issues were settled, many very significant ones remain contentious, and will be picked up again by the working group when it meets in February 2013.

Background Paper For Second Workshop On Contract Negotiation Support For Developing Host Countries, Vale Columbia Center On Sustainable International Investment, Humboldt-Viadrina School Of Governance

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance (HSVG) have initiated a process to discuss the desirability and feasibility of mechanisms to provide negotiation support for developing host countries in their negotiations with major investors.

At a first workshop held in October 2011, participants agreed on the need for an expansion of support for developing countries in their contract negotiations.

A second workshop was held at Columbia University in July 2012 that undertook a gap analysis between the existing sources of support for developing countries in relation to complex contracts and the countries’ needs for …

Art Law In Transactional Practice, Jeff W. Slattery

Faculty Scholarship

Artists are increasingly important players in the economic, social, and cultural development of communities throughout the United States. Unfortunately, a lack of adequate funding and appreciation of their legal needs often means artists do not seek or receive transactional legal assistance when it would be beneficial. Attorneys, meanwhile, may perceive the needs of artists as very specialized, and thereby well beyond the scope of services the attorney can provide. For these reasons, artists may find themselves without legal assistance, to the detriment of their business, their creative output, and their community. This article seeks to demystify a number of the …

Cisg Translation Issues: Reducing Legal Babelism, Claire M. Germain

UF Law Faculty Publications

The CISG (Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods) has remarkably facilitated commercial transactions across boundaries and different legal systems. This article, to be published as a Book Chapter, discusses some possible difficulties caused by using different languages, or words which might be interpreted differently, and some solutions and ways to deal with these difficulties. Three kinds of issues have appeared: the first has to do with drafting issues, and the peculiar problem of the six official languages of the Convention. The second set of issues deals with the interpretation of the Convention and the so-called homeward trend. …

Openness In Extraction, Lisa E. Sachs, Shefa Siegel

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

More than a decade before becoming President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer, observed that, among the branches of property law, the distribution of mining rights most elegantly reflects the vicissitudes of social and political relations. According to Hoover, mining rights were a "never-ending contention," as old as economic and civil conflict, among four principle classes – overlord, state, landowner, and miner. "Somebody," he concluded, "has to keep peace and settle disputes."

Today, with the prices of major natural-resource commodities – including oil, coal, copper, gold, and iron ore – doubling, tripling, or rising even faster, the …

Paper On The Business Case For Transparency, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

CCSI strongly supports the transparency of contracts and tax flows. CCSI shares the belief of many stakeholders that transparency is essential to leverage extractive industries for sustainable development and is in the mutual interest of all stakeholders. However, some industry players continue to voice the concern that increased transparency would be harmful for their business. Therefore, CCSI is working to also establish the business case for transparency.

In one such case, some industry players have been lobbying against the regulations developed by the Security and Exchange Commission to implement the mandatory disclosure provisions of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform …

Will Firms Consider A European Optional Instrument In Contract Law?, Gary Low

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The diversity of contract laws is said by the Commission to discouragecross-border trade and hinder the development by SMEs of a pan-European commercialpolicy. An optional instrument containing both facilitative general contractrules and mandatory consumer protection rules, one of the solutions proposed by theCommission, is gaining rapid support from key stakeholders. Drawing from firms’own views on the problems of legal diversity, and insights from organisationalscience, this article sets out the circumstances in which firms will likely consider aEuropean optional code. Results are mixed: some firms may consider it, whileothers may ignore it. Much depends the firm’s aspirations (i.e. SMEs cannot beassumed …

Addressing Climate Change Mitigation And Adaptation Through Insurance For Overseas Investments: The Example Of The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In 2008, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) estimated that investments of between US$540–570 billion in physical assets and other financial flows will be needed to adequately reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to combat climate change; additionally, tens and possibly hundreds of billions of dollars may be necessary to enable countries to adapt to the phenomenon’s challenges. Through climate negotiations under the UNFCCC in Copenhagen and Cancun, developed country governments committed to provide developing countries roughly US$30 billion between 2010 and 2012 and to mobilize approximately US$100 billion per year by 2020 for climate change activities. …

Reforming Wto Discipline On Export Duties: Sovereignty Over Natural Resources, Economic Development And Environmental Protection, Julia Ya Qin

Law Faculty Research Publications

The current World Trade Organization (WTO) regime on export restraints comprises two extremes: at one end is the near-complete freedom to levy export duties enjoyed by most Members, which renders theWTO discipline on export restrictions largely ineffective; at the other end, the rigid obligations imposed on several acceding Members prohibiting the use of export duties for any purpose.The recent WTO ruling in China-Raw Materials has only solidified the latter extreme. This article seeks to expose the irrationality of the current regime, especially the problems created by the rigid obligations of the several acceding Members. It contends that such obligations deprive …

Is Canada The New Shangri-La Of Global Securities Class Actions?, Tanya Monestier

Law Faculty Scholarship

There has been significant academic buzz about Silver v. Imax, an Ontario case certifying a global class of shareholders alleging statutory and common law misrepresentation in connection with a secondary market distribution of shares. Although global class actions on a more limited scale have been certified in Canada prior to Imax, it can now be said that global classes have "officially" arrived in Canada. Many predict that the Imax decision means that Ontario will become the new center for the resolution of global securities disputes. This is particularly so after the United States largely relinquished this role in Morrison v. …

Transnational Copyright: Misalignments Between Regulation, Business Models And User Practice, Leonhard Dobusch, Sigrid Quack

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

In this paper we analyse discursive struggles over what is referred to as legal and illegal user practices in the internet as an outcome of regulatory uncertainty. The latter, in turn, is examined in the context of a multi-layered transnational copyright regime characterised by three features: the absence of an universally recognized single authority in charge of law-making, fragmented and partially contradicting forms of regulation of global, national and sectoral scope, and considerable indeterminacy of rule interpretation and application arising from the variety and distinctiveness of local usage contexts. We argue that notions of legality and illegality are used strategically …

Transnational Business Governance And The Management Of Natural Resources, Virginia Haufler

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

In the last two decades, the international community has intervened directly to reduce the conflict and corruption that accompany natural resource development in weakly governed states. These efforts converge on the norm of information disclosure by a number of different transnational business governance initiatives. This article examines how the successive failures of public and private efforts led to patterns of convergence and divergence in the transnational governance of the extractive sector. The timing of the effort, combined with variation in industry structure, differences in the targets of information disclosure, and learning over time influence the outcome in each case. This …

Iso 26000: Bridging The Public/Private Divide In Transnational Business Governance Interactions, Kernaghan Webb

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

This paper explores the proposition that the ISO 26000 social responsibility guidance standard represents an innovative form of global social responsibility (SR) rule instrument that performs five key distinctive bridging functions in addressing public and private transnational business governance interactions: (1) top down transpositions of key concepts from inter-­‐governmental instruments directed at first instance at states into a non-­‐state global SR rule instrument applying directly to transnational corporations (TNCs) and other organizations; (2) bottom up transpositions of key concepts from non-­‐state SR instruments of narrow focus to apply more broadly to all SR activities; (3) innovations in the standards development …

Transnational Business Governance Interactions And Technical Systems In Global Finance, Tony Porter

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

Most transnational regulatory problems involve technical systems: extended sets of productive connections between humans, organized knowledge, and material objects. The functioning and relations between transnational business governance (TBG) schemes in any particular issue area are usually shaped by these technical systems. These technical systems and the material world that they interact with are not simply exogenous environments for tBG schemes. Individual TBG schemes can enhance their power and influence by expanding their function in a technical system, by incorporating the material aspects of the system into their activities, or by producing the system's technical knowledge. I hypothesize that where a …

The Architecture Of Transnational Private Regulation, Fabrizio Cafaggi

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

Conflicting interests among private actors constitute an important factor to explain why and how transnational private regulation has grown and the proliferation of standards and standard setting organizations that has followed. This essay provides a map of transnational regulatory space suggesting that the different levels are related to various governance responses to conflicts within the private sphere and between private and public actors.Three levels of the global regulatory space are considered: (1) the single global regulatory body, where interests are integrated into one organization, (2) the regime, in which multiple organizations operate, regulating within the same policy field, (3) multiple …

Emerging Private Governance: The Challenges Of Choosing A Policy Focus, Graeme Auld

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

Across sectors of the global economy, private governance has emerged as a new instrument for addressing pressing social and environmental problems. Although better suited for tackling the challenge of reaching agreements among states to address problems transcending national borders, these initiatives create new boundaries based on what problems they choose to focus on and which actors they choose to regulate – that is, the different policy foci of individual programs. Specialization is not inherently problematic. Private governance can focus attention on the problems of a single-issue area and build capacity among actors to resolve its problems, but equally a particular …

Assembling An Experimentalist Regime: Transnational Governance Interactions In The Forest Sector, Christine Overdevest, Jonathan Zeitlin

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

Transnational governance initiatives increasingly face the problem of regime complexity in which a proliferation of regulatory schemes operate in the same policy domain, supported by varying combinations of public and private actors. The literature suggests that such regime complexity can lead to forum-shopping and other self-interested strategies which undermine the effectiveness of transnational regulation. Based on the design principles of experimentalist governance, this paper identifies a variety of pathways and mechanisms which promote productive interactions in regime complexes. We use the case of the EU's Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, interacting with private certification schemes and public …

Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay introduces the Chicago-Kent Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective. It seeks to situate the field of women's legal history and to explore what it means to begin writing a transnational women's history which transcends and at times disrupts the nation state. In doing so, it sets forth some of the fundamental premises of women's legal history and points to new ways of writing such histories.

Changes In The European Union's Regime Of Recognizing And Enforcing Judgments And Transnational Litigation In The United States, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The European Commission has proposed to amend (recast) the Brussels I Regulation, which governs jurisdiction to adjudicate, parallel proceedings, and judgments recognition within the European Union. Although much of the Brussels I Regulation is simply the 1968 Brussels Convention cast into European Union legislation, the proposed amendments are part of a deeper set of structural and conceptual changes in the law of transnational litigation within the Union over the past couple of decades. Understanding these changes is essential to understanding what drives the proposed amendments and what is likely to follow.

In this paper – presented at the symposium Our …

The Full Story Of U.S. V. Smith, America’S Most Important Piracy Case, Joel H. Samuels

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

From Institutional Misalignments To Socially Sustainable Governance: The Guiding Principles For The Implementation Of The United Nations Protect, Respect And Remedy And The Construction Of Inter-Systemic Global Governance, Larry Cata Backer

Journal Articles

Once upon a time, and for a very short time, there was something that people in authority, and those who manage collective memory, considered a stable system of political and economic organization. It was grounded on a complex division of authority between states, economic entities and social collectives. Contemporary economic globalization has destabilized this traditional system. Corporations are no longer completely controlled by the states that chartered them or within complex enterprises, even by those in which they operate. Social collectives now operate to change the political cultures that affect the public policy of states and the economic behavior of …

Converging Trends In Investment Treaty Practice, 38 N.C. J. Int’L & Com. Reg. 151 (2012), Karen H. Cross

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

International Civil Litigation In U.S. Courts: Becoming A Paper Tiger?, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Rio+20 Process: Forward Movement For The Environment?, Ann Powers

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This commentary summarizes the events at the recent UN Conference on Sustainable Development, commonly referred to as Rio+20, noting both the role of official national delegations and the diversity of non-state parties that were involved in a variety of venues at and around Rio+20. It sketches the background of sustainable development efforts, maps the road from the original 1992 Rio Earth Summit to the 20th anniversary gathering, and comments on the Conference’s outcomes and their implications for international law and legal institutions. In answer to the much debated question of whether the Rio+20 was a success or a failure, or …

Value Divergence In Global Intellectual Property Law, J. Janewa Oseitutu

Faculty Publications

It is a challenge for the United States to adequately protect the interests of its intellectual property industries, especially when U.S. interests are not in line with the social, cultural, and economic goals of other nations. Yet, as a major exporter of intellectual property protected goods, the U.S. has an interest in negotiating effective international intellectual property agreements that are perceived to be legitimate by the state signatories and their constituents. Focusing on value divergence, this article contributes to the growing body of literature on developing a robust but flexible global intellectual property system, arguing that the trade-based approach to …

Senses Of Sen: Reflections On Amartya Sen’S Ideas Of Justice, César Arjona, Arif A. Jamal, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Victor V. Ramraj, Francisco Satiro

Faculty Papers & Publications

This review essay explores how Amartya Sen’s recent book, The Idea of Justice, is relevant and important for the development and assessment of transnational theories and applications to transnational justice and legal education programs. The essay captures a trans-jural dialogue of multinational scholars and teachers, discussing Sen’s contributions to moral justice theory (criticizing programs for “transcendental institutionalism” (like Rawlsian theory) and instead focusing on “comparative broadening” including empirical, relative, and comparative assessments of programs to ameliorate injustice in the world in its comparative concreteness (as in Indian social justice theory and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and related …

Anti-Trafficking Legislation In Sub-Saharan Africa: Analyzing The Role Of Coercion And Parental Responsibility, Ruby Andrew, Benjamin N. Lawrance

Fourth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking, 2012

This article discusses the effect of US and international support for local laws to combat child trafficking in sub-Saharan African states. The annual ranking of African anti-trafficking measures, produced by the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (OMCTP) in conjunction with the UN Office on Crime and Drugs, not only provides an important source of data but also creates a powerful incentive for African states to effect legislative change.

We argue that, although the US supports criminalization of traffickers and the OMCTP espouses laws to deter parental inducement to support trafficking activities, the implementation of …