Law Commons^™

Future-Proofing U.S. Laws For War Crimes Investigations In The Digital Era, Rebecca Hamilton

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Advances in information technology have irrevocably changed the nature of war crimes investigations. The pursuit of accountability for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community now invariably requires access to digital evidence. The global reach of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter means that much of that digital evidence is held by U.S. social media companies, and access to it is subject to the U.S. Stored Communications Act.

This is the first Article to look at the legal landscape facing international investigators seeking access to digital evidence regarding genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. It …

The Values-Based Trade Agenda, Fernanda Giorgia Nicola Dr., Michelle Egan

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With the increasing trade tensions between the United States and China, pressures created by Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic, most trade scholars have focused on rising protectionism exhibited through defensive strategies such as tariffs and export controls. However, this focus ignores the fundamental shift in international trade goals of the United States and the European Union towards a values-based trade agenda.

Instead of merely focusing on free trade based on efficiency and market access, trade regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have independently pursued measures designed to address environmental sustainability and social equity. These policies resonate with their domestic …

Defending Democracy Through Law: The Establishment Of The Legal Service Of The European Parliment, Fernanda Giorgia Nicola Dr., Antonio Caiola

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Democracy, as well as the rule of law, is one of the founding values of the European Union. With the recent rise of some authoritarian governments in Europe, scholars have focused primarily on the efforts led by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) to curb democratic backsliding. While European institutions have struggled defending the rule of law inside the Union through lawsuits and economic sanctions against those governments, the history of integration shows how the European Parliament (“EP”) led the efforts to cure the democratic deficit existing in the European institutional system. Since the end of …

Copyright In The Texts Of The Law: Historical Perspectives, Charles Duan

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Recently, state governments have begun to claim a copyright interest in their official published codes of law, in particular arguing that ancillary materials such as annotations to the statutory text are subject to state-held copyright protection because those materials are not binding commands that carry the force of law. Litigation over this issue and a vigorous policy debate are ongoing.

This article contributes a historical perspective to this ongoing debate over copyright in texts relating to the law. It reviews the history of government production and use of annotations, commentaries, legislative debates, and other related information relevant to the law …

Erasing Race, Llezlie Green

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Low-wage workers frequently experience exploitation, including wage theft, at the intersection of their racial identities and their economic vulnerabilities. Scholars, however, rarely consider the role of wage and hwur exploitation in broader racial subordination frameworks. This Essay considers the narratives that have informed the detachment of racial justice from the worker exploitation narrative and the distancing of economic justice from the civil rights narrative. It then contends that social movements, like the Fight for $15, can disrupt narrow understandings of low-wage worker exploitation and proffer more nuanced narratives that connect race, economic justice, and civil rights to a broader antisubordination …

Sdlp After 20: Sustainable Development In The Anthropocene, David Hunter

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No abstract provided.

The New Social Contracts In International Supply Chains, David Snyder

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This Article considers, from legal, practical, moral, and policy perspectives, Model Contract Clauses (MCCs) to protect the human rights of workers in international supply chains. The product of the ABA Business Law Section Working Group to Draft Human Rights Protections in International Supply Contracts, the MCCs are an effort to provide companies with carefully researched and well-drafted clauses to incorporate human rights policies into supply contracts (purchase orders, master vendor agreements, and the like). The Article discusses the impetus, goals, and strategies of the MCCs and explains the paradigm of the corporate, operational, and political landscape for which they are …

The Clinical Law Review At 25 - What Have We Wrought, Robert Dinerstein

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No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of Canada On The Appropriateness And Scope Of A Global Website Takedown Order, Jennifer C. Daskal

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In Google v. Equustek, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Google to delist all websites used by Datalink, a company that stole trade secrets from Equustek, a Canada-based information technology company. Google had agreed to do so in part, but with respect to searches that originated from google.ca only, the default browser for those in Canada. Equustek however, argued the takedowns needed to be global in order to be effective. It thus sought an injunction ordering Google to delist the allegedly infringing websites from all of Google's search engines whether accessed from google.ca, google.com, or any other entry point. Google …

Borders And Bits, Jennifer Daskal

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Our personal data is everywhere and anywhere, moving across national borders in ways that defy normal expectations of how things and people travel from Point A to Point B. Yet, whereas data transits the globe without any intrinsic ties to territory, the governments that seek to access or regulate this data operate with territorial-based limits. This Article tackles the inherent tension between how governments and data operate, the jurisdictional conflicts that have emerged, and the power that has been delegated to the multinational corporations that manage our data across borders as a result. It does so through the lens of …

Inaccessible Apexes: Comparing Access To Regional Human Rights Courts And Commissions In Europe, The Americas, And Africa Symposium: Comparing Regional Human Rights Regimes, Claudia Martin, Francoise Hampson, Frans Vilijoen

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The three well-established regional human rights systems (in Europe, the Americas, and Africa) aim to provide access to individuals to a decision and remedy based on the violation of human rights in the founding treaties. In this article, the notion of the "dispute pyramid," developed in sociolegal studies, generally, is adjusted to describe and help us better understand regional access. Access differs considerably across the three systems, and its major stumbling blocks present themselves at different stages. In the European system, most cases are dismissed at the admissibility phase. In the Inter-American system, most cases are weeded out at the …

The Reform Of The Russian Legal Profession: Three Varying Perspectives, Susan Carle, Delphine Nougayrède

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This Article was co-authored by Susan Carle (American University Washington College of Law), Gayane Davidyan (Moscow State University), Thomas McDonald and Delphine Nougayrède. In the Article the four authors debate various approaches to reforming the legal profession in Russia. They start out with a historical introduction followed by a presentation and discussion of the status at present. A large number of legal practitioners, including the international law firms, are currently unregulated and practice within what is sometimes referred to as the "free sector". The Russian government has for a number of years attempted to introduce reforms that would require these …

Academy On Human Rights And Humanitarian Law Articles And Essays On Extractive Industries And Human Rights: Introduction, Claudia Martin, Diego Rodriguez-Pnzon

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We are delighted to present this year's publication of the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, which includes the three best essays in English and in Spanish recognized in the 2016 Human Rights Essay Award competition. It is satisfying to think that this competition allowed a number of participants an opportunity to expound their thoughts on so many important topics and areas of the world. We hope these participants are able to use their articles as mechanisms for change.

Access To Data Across Borders: The Critical Role For Congress To Play Now, Jennifer Daskal

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No abstract provided.

Genealogies Of Cost–Benefit Analysis In Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation, Fernanda Nicola

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Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) has become a quintessential tool in administrative law informing a variety of modes of regulatory governance. It provides a justification for the regulation of markets based on a quasi-scientific and seemly neutral logic to assess the impact of secondary legislation by government agencies. A new frontier for CBA is the promotion of trade liberalization. It features prominently in the regulatory chapter of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). During the TTIP negotiations, scholars deployed CBA as a “neutral” tool to achieve greater convergence or reassert divergence and experimentalism in regulatory governance across the Atlantic. A genealogical …

A Tradition At War With Itself: A Reply To Professor Rana's Review Of America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai

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This essay responds to Professor Aziz Rana's review essay, "The Many American Constitutions," 93 Texas Law Review 1193 (2015).

He contends: (1) my portrayal of American constitutionalism might contain a “hidden” teleological understanding of the development of constitutional law; (2) my notion of "conventional sovereignty" sometimes seems content-free and at other times "interlinked with liberal egalitarianism"; and (3) a focus on failed constitutions "inadvertently tends to compartmentalize the overall tradition."

I answer in the following ways: (1) I reject any sense that constitutional law has moved in an arc of steady progress toward Enlightenment and instead embrace a tradition of …

Comparative Urban Governance For Lawyers, Fernanda Nicola

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No abstract provided.

Through Our Glass Darkly: Does Comparative Law Counsel The Use Of Foreign Law In U.S. Constitutional Adjudication?, Kenneth Anderson

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This (35 pp.) essay appears as a contribution to a law review symposium on the work of Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon in comparative law. The essay begins by asking what comparative law as a scholarly discipline might suggest about the use of foreign (or unratified or nationally "unaccepted" international law) by US courts in US constitutional adjudication. The trend seemed to be gathering steam in US courts between the early-1990s and mid-2000s, but by the late-2000s, it appeared to be stalled as a practice, notwithstanding the intense scholarly interest throughout this period.

Practical politics within the US …

Transforming Family Law Through Same-Sex Marriage: Lessons From (And To) The Western World, Macarena Saez

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Same-sex marriage is a 21st century phenomenon. In less than 13 years more than 15 countries have amended their marriage laws to include same-sex couples. Some countries have made the change through political decisions but others have reached the change through adjudicative processes. A comparative analysis of decisions from the highest courts of countries or states granting marriage to same-sex couples demonstrates: 1. similar arguments are presented to these courts when making the case for and against same-sex marriage; 2. courts are using comparative law to justify their decisions on same-sex marriage; 3. the majority of courts in these countries …

Reimagining The Law Of Self-Employment: A Comparative Perspective, Jayesh Rathod, Michal Skapski

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U.S. employment law has traditionally disfavored bright-line rules to distinguish between traditional “employees” and independent contractors, instead relying on more flexible criteria, to be applied on a case-by-case basis. This fluidity has enabled employers to structure these relationships – and the corresponding bundle of worker rights and benefits – in ways that serve their own material and normative interests. Indeed, recent employment law literature has noted a dramatic shift towards independent contracting and contingent worker schemes in the U.S., even when the actual workplace dynamics are more akin to an employer-employee relationship. These same trends are now visible on the …

The Ambition And Transformative Potential Of Progressive Property, Ezra Rosser

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The emerging progressive property school celebrates and finds its meaning in the social nature of property. Rejecting the idea that exclusion lies at the core of property law, progressive property scholars call for a reconsideration of the relationships owners and nonowners have with property and with each other. Despite these ambitions, progressive property scholarship has so far largely confined itself to questions of exclusion and access. This Essay argues that such an emphasis glosses over race-related acquisition and distribution problems that pervade American history and property law. The modest structural changes supported by progressive property scholars fail to account for …

Invisible Cities In Europe, Fernanda Nicola

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No abstract provided.

Judicial Retirement And Return To Practice, Mary Clark

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This Article engages recent scholarly debates about U.S. Supreme Court tenure and retirement practices, specifically those concerning the merits of adopting eighteen-year term limits or mandatory retirement for Supreme Court Justices. It broadens the discussion by including all Article III judges and by addressing former Article III judges’ return to practice following resignation or retirement, which has been largely ignored in the literature to date despite what I have found to be the return-to-practice rate of over forty percent in the last two decades.

This Article advocates retaining life tenure because it promotes institutional and individual judicial independence better than …

Advice And Consent Vs. Silence And Dissent? The Contrasting Roles Of The Legislature In U.S. And U.K. Judicial Appointments, Mary Clark

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The Senate‘s role in judicial appointments has come under increasingly withering criticism for its uninformative and spectacle-like nature. At the same time, Britain has established two new judicial appointment processes - to accompany its new Supreme Court and existing lower courts - in which Parliament plays no role. This Article seeks to understand the reasons for the inclusion and exclusion of the legislature in the U.S. and U.K. judicial appointment processes adopted at the creation of their respective Supreme Courts.

The Article proceeds by highlighting the ideas and concerns motivating inclusion of the legislature in judicial appointments in the early …

Teaching International Law: Lessons From Clinical Education: Introductory Remarks, Richard J. Wilson

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No abstract provided.

Significance Of The Fujimori Trial, Juan E. Mendez

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No abstract provided.

The Merits Of ‘Merits’ Review: A Comparative Look At The Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Jeffrey Lubbers, Michael Asimow

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This article compares several systems of administrative adjudication. In the U.S., adjudication is typically performed by the same agency that makes and enforces the rules. However, in Australia, almost all administrative adjudication is performed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), a non-specialized adjudicating agency, and several other specialized tribunals that are independent of the enforcing agency. These tribunals (which evolved out of concerns about separation of powers) have achieved great legitimacy. In the U.K., recent legislation (the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act) merged numerous specialized tribunals into a single first-tier tribunal with much stronger guarantees of independence than previously existed. …

Comparative Law: Problems And Prospects, David Snyder

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The following is an edited transcript of the closing plenary session of the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law. The session took place on Saturday, July 31, 2010, in Washington, D.C., at the conclusion of the week-long congress, which is held quadrennially by the International Academy of Comparative Law (Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé). The remarks were given in a mix of French and English, but for ease of reading the transcript below is almost entirely in English.

Family Law Exceptionalism In Comparative Law, Fernanda Nicola

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Today, family law is, to a surprising degree, at the center of comparative law inquiries committed to legal unification. Comparative family law projects range from analyzing convergence and harmonization proposals in the West, to law and development schemes in the rest of the world. The most salient reforms of abortion, same-sex marriage, transsexual, and adoption rights are increasingly promoted at the transnational level through international human rights and antidiscrimination principles. Regional and international human rights tribunals in Europe and Latin America are called upon to interpret the right to family life, non-discrimination, and freedom of movement principles to redefine the …

Turkey: At The Crossroads Of Secular West And Traditional East, Padideh Ala'i

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On January 9, 2008 Washington College of Law at American University sponsored a conference entitled: Turkey: At the Crossroads of Secular West and Traditional East. This conference was percipitated by the recent election of the AKP party in Turkey and my trip to Turkey in summer 2007. In this short introduction to the American University International law Review symposium issue, I summarize the major issues raised in that one day conference specifically by Dean Haluk Kabaalioglu of Yeditepe University Facutly of Law, expert on EU law and Turkish-EU relations,and Professor Feroz Ahmad, the learned historian of modern Turkey. The aim …