Law Commons^™

Six Steps To A Smaller World: Finding International Law From Your Desktop, Jennifer Sekula

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Targets And Timetables: Good Policy But Bad Politics?, Daniel M. Bodansky

Scholarly Works

From a policy perspective, a climate architecture based on economy-wide, binding emissions targets, combined with emissions trading, has many virtues. But even such an architecture represents good climate policy, it is far more questionable whether it represents good climate politics -- at least in the near-term, for the upcoming "post-2012" negotiations. Given the wide range of differences in national perspectives and preferences regarding climate change, a more flexible, bottom-up approach may be needed, which builds on the efforts that are already beginning to emerge, by allowing different countries to assume different types of international commitments – not only absolute targets, …

International Law's Lessons For The Law Of The Lakes, Joseph W. Dellapenna

Working Paper Series

The eight Governors of the Great Lakes States signed a proposed new compact for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence basin on December 13, 2005, and they joined with the Premiers of Ontario and Québec in a parallel agreement on the same topic on the same day. Neither document is legally binding—the proposed new compact because it has not yet been ratified by any state nor consented to by Congress; the parallel agreement because it is not intended to be legally binding. Both documents are designed to preclude the export of water from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin apart from …

Do Investors In Controlled Firms Value Insider Trading Laws? International Evidence, Laura N. Beny

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This article characterizes insider trading in controlled firms as an agency problem. Using a standard agency model of corporate value diversion through insider trading by a controlling shareholder, I derive testable hypotheses about the relationship between corporate value and insider trading laws. The article tests these hypotheses using cross-sectional data on firms from a group of developed countries. The results show that stringent insider trading laws and enforcement are associated with greater corporate valuation among firms in common law countries, a result that is consistent with the claim that insider trading laws can mitigate agency costs. In contrast, insider trading …

The Limits Of Group Rights: Religious Institutions And Religious Minorities In International Law, Bernadette A. Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Scholars and advocates of religious liberty within the United States are beginning to suggest that our constitutional discourse has focused too intently on individual rights and that our attention should now turn to the interests of religious institutions and the notion of church autonomy. The reoriented jurisprudence encouraged by such proposals is not without parallel in other national contexts, including those of Europe. Heeding calls to attend to church autonomy could thus bring the United States into closer harmony with its European counterparts. Placing priority on church autonomy might, however, generate unforeseen obstacles to the exercise of religious liberty. In …

Climate Change As A Global Challenge, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Interest, John Y. Gotanda

Working Paper Series

In recent years, a number of tribunals, mainly those deciding investment disputes, have re-examined traditional practices concerning the awarding of interest, particularly whether interest should be awarded at market rates and on a compounded basis. However, many tribunals deciding transnational contracts disputes continue to follow the practice of applying national laws on interest, which often results in the application of domestic statutory interest rates calling for a fixed rate of interest to accrue on a simple as opposed to compound basis. These statutory rates often do not change to reflect economic conditions and thus may under compensate or over compensate …

Bollywood Is Coming! Copyright And Film Industry Issues Regarding International Film Co-Productions Involving India, Timm Neu

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

The Indian film industry produces more movies than any other and is characterized as being on the threshold of emerging as a big market internationally with an expected growth rate of close to 20% per year. Its regulatory and legal mechanisms are developing rapidly to keep pace. This article is dedicated to the Indian film industry and its international potential. It analyzes the copyright aspects of film co-productions involving India and compares the characteristics of the national film industries of Germany, the U.S. and especially India (Bollywood) from a legal perspective. It points to key copyright issues in the field …

Chain Reaction: How Property Begets Property, Sabrina Safrin

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Classic theories for the evolution of property rights consider the emergence of private property to be a progressive development reflecting a society’s movement to a more efficient property regime. This article argues that instead of this progressive dynamic, a more subtle and damaging chain reaction dynamic can come into play that traditional theories for intellectual and other property rights neither anticipate nor explain. The article suggests that the expansion of intellectual and other property rights have an internally generative dynamic. Drawing upon contemporary case studies, the article argues that property rights evolve in reaction to each other. The creation of …

U.N. Documents In U.S. Case Law, Paul Hellyer

Library Staff Publications

Mr. Hellyer explores the role pLayed by U.N. documents in the opinions of United States courts. He examines the subject matter of opinions in which U.N. documents were cited, the types of documents that were cited, the purpose of the citations, the treatment received by the cited documents, and the time periods in which the citations occurred.

Diplomatic Immunity Ratione Personae Did The International Court Of Justice Create A New Rule Of Customary International Law In Congo V Belgium, Mark A. Summers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Justice Without Politics: Prosecutorial Discretion And The International Criminal Court, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The ICC Prosecutor's own charging policies should be prepared to give way to the judgments of legitimate political actors in times of political transition when actual arrests are more likely and competing justice proposals pose a more troubling challenge to the ICC's authority. In that scenario, I argue that the Prosecutor should encourage legitimate political actors to reach policy decisions that will command deference by the ICC. Such deference could take one or both of the following forms: (1) explicit deference to political actors, principally the U.N. Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, and (2) implied …

Congress, The Supreme Court, And Enemy Combatants: How Lawmakers Buoyed Judicial Supremacy By Placing Limits On Federal Court Jurisdiction, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Theory Of Expressive International Law, Alex Geisinger, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

Ever since Grotius first suggested that desire for esteem from the broader global community motivates States to comply with international law, identifying just how this desire effects compliance has proven illusive. The ability to harness the pull of international society is important to virtually all treaty formation and compliance. It is especially important in the area of human rights regimes where other compliance forces such as coercion, are rarely, if ever, used. Recent empirical evidence, however, suggests that human rights regimes are ineffective. Indeed, in many situations this evidence suggests that the human rights practices of States that ratify such …

Humanitarian Intervention: The New Missing Link In The Fight To Prevent Crimes Against Humanity And Genocide, Paul Williams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Global Reach, Local Grasp: Constructing Extraterritorial Jurisdiction In The Age Of Globalization, Steve Coughlan, Robert Currie, Hugh Kindred, Teresa Scassa

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The reach of national law is often greater than its grasp. Canada, like other countries, has effective legal power over its territory and all within it. However, one consequence of the current process of globalization, for good or ill, is that Canadian interests are no longer contained exclusively within Canadian borders. Canada thus finds it increasingly necessary to consider asserting its legal jurisdiction beyond its frontiers. Such extraterritorial assertion of Canadian authority may well run into strong opposition from other countries, who might view Canada as attempting to intervene in their own national territory and domestic affairs. Likewise, other states, …

The Act Requirement As A Basic Concept Of Criminal Law, Luis E. Chiesa

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Forward: Lessons From The Saddam Trial, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

Forward to the conference on "Lessons from the Daddam Trial."

Mission Possible: Reciprocal Deference Between Domestic Regulatory Structures And The Wto, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

One of the goals of Article III of GATT is to invalidate domestic regulatory measures, including taxes and non-fiscal policies that amount to non-tariff barriers to trade (NTB) and therefore violate the principles of national treatment. While internal policies that directly discriminate between products based on nationality or origin are clearly in violation of national treatment principles, it is the facially neutral regulatory measures with protectionist and discriminatory effects that are more difficult to assess, even within transparent regulatory processes. However, with their emphasis on the likeness of the products in question, WTO panels run the risk of alienating member …

A Pluralist Approach To International Law, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Essay is a contribution to a recent symposium at Yale Law School asking whether there is a new New Haven School of International Law. The original New Haven School of International Law offered a significant, process-based, rejoinder to the realism and positivism that had dominated international relations theory in the United States since the close of World War II. Whereas international relations realists viewed international law as merely a product of state power relations, and positivists dismissed international law entirely because it lacked both sovereign commands and a rule of recognition, scholars of the New Haven School studied law …

Litigating Canada-U.S. Transboundary Harm: International Environmental Lawmaking And The Threat Of Extraterritorial Reciprocity, Austen L. Parrish, Shi-Ling Hsu

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article joins a spirited debate ongoing among international law scholars. Numerous articles have debated the changing nature of international law and relations: the impact of globalization, the decline of territorial-sovereignty, the ever important role that non-state actors play, and the growing use of domestic laws to solve transboundary problems. That scholarship, however, often speaks only in general theoretical terms, and has largely ignored how these changes are playing out in countries outside the United States in ways that impact American interests.

This Article picks up where that scholarship leaves off. It examines one of the perennial challenges for international …

Illegal Peace? Power Sharing With Warlords In Africa, Jeremy I. Levitt

Journal Publications

This paper examines the legality of power-sharing in Africa with specific reference to the Accra and Lome accords, which brought about a fragile cessation of the conflicts in Liberian and Sierra Leone, respectively. It examines the future of international criminal law vis-a-vis power-sharing by prospectively examining gaps in state practice and rules that arguably permit the "crime of illegal peace" by insurrectionists, political elites, and moral guarantors. When warlords use violence to coerce democratically constituted governments to share power, does power-sharing simply become a euphemism for "guns for jobs"? Which legal rules, if any, govern peace agreements in internal conflicts? …