Law Commons^™

Kiobel V. Royal Dutch Petroleum: Delineating The Bounds Of The Alien Tort Statute, Tara Mcgrath

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

This commentary previews the upcoming Supreme Court case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., in which the Court will address questions regarding the Alien Tort Statute and its applicability to foreign conduct and foreign litigants. The case will require the Court to reexamine the bounds of a long-ago established tort doctrine in light of more modern considerations and developments in international law.

Erie, Swift, And Legal Positivism, Michael S. Green

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

The Reality Of Eu-Conformity Review In France, Juscelino F. Colares

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

French High Courts embraced review of national legislation for conformity with EU law in different stages and following distinct approaches to EU law supremacy. This article tests whether adherence to different views on EU law supremacy has resulted in different levels of EU directive enforcement by the French High Courts. After introducing the complex French systems of statutory, treaty and constitutional review, this study explains how EU-conformity review emerged among these systems and provides an empirical analysis refuting the anecdotal view that different EU supremacy theories produce substantial differences in conformity adjudication outcomes. These Courts' uniformly high rates of EU …

Adopting Regulatory Objectives For The Legal Profession, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Choice Of Law As General Common Law: A Reply To Professor Brilmayer, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reading The Standing Tea Leaves In American Electric Power V. Connecticut, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In American Electric Power v. Connecticut (AEP), the U.S. Supreme Court by an equally divided vote of four to four affirmed the Second Circuit’s decision finding standing and jurisdiction in the case. Even though it did not announce the identities of the justices who voted for standing and against standing, the AEP decision took the unusual step of providing some explanation for how the Court divided on the standing question, and, as a result, provided important information about the positions of the justices on the issue. While it is not binding as a decision for the lower courts except …

A Tort Statute, With Aliens And Pirates, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

The pirates of the Caribbean are back. Not in another fantastical film but in the litigation over the reach of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). For the first time since they dealt with the legal issues raised by a wave of maritime predation in the Caribbean in the early nineteenth century, Supreme Court justices are seriously discussing piracy. This crime has emerged as the test case for evaluating the major controversies about the reach of the statute -- namely, extraterritorial application and the existence of corporate liability. At oral argument in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell, justices of all persuasions …

Federal Constitutions: The Keystone Of Nested Commons Governance, Blake Hudson

Journal Articles

The constitutional structure of a federal system of government can undermine effective natural capital management across scales, from local to global. Federal constitutions that grant subnational governments virtually exclusive regulatory authority over certain types of natural capital appropriation — such as resources appropriated by private forest management or other land-use-related economic development activities — entrench a legally defensible natural capital commons in those jurisdictions. For example, the same constitution that may legally facilitate poor forest-management practices by private landowners in the southeastern United States may complicate international negotiations related to forest management and climate change. Both the local and international …

The Ghost That Slayed The Mandate, Kevin C. Walsh

Law Faculty Publications

Virginia v. Sebelius is a federal lawsuit in which Virginia has challenged President Obama's signature legislative initiative of health care reform. Virginia has sought declaratory and injunctive relief to vindicate a state statute declaring that no Virginia resident shall be required to buy health insurance. To defend this state law from the preemptive effect of federal law, Virginia has contended that the federal legislation's individual mandate to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. Virginia's lawsuit has been one of the most closely followed and politically salient federal cases in recent times. Yet the very features of the case that have contributed …

Proof Of Classwide Injury, Sergio J. Campos

Articles

No abstract provided.

Does Section 329 Grant Exclusive Jurisdiction To Bankruptcy Courts?, Samantha M. Tusa

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Fee agreements between bankruptcy debtors and their counsel must often be settled in court. In which court those fee disputes can be heard is a question that is not yet settled. One court has looked to section 329 of the Bankruptcy Code for the answer. Section 329 states that if the compensation agreed upon by the debtor and attorney exceeds a reasonable value for the services rendered, “the court” may cancel the agreement or return some of the payment. In re Piccinini is the first case to hold that the phrase “the court” in section 329 confers exclusive jurisdiction …

Court Litigation Over Arbitration Agreements: Is It Time For A New Default Rule?, Jack Graves

Scholarly Works

Court litigation over the existence or validity of arbitration agreements is a major threat to the efficacy of international commercial arbitration. While New York Convention Article II(3) requires a court to “refer the parties to arbitration” when faced with a valid and effective arbitration agreement, it fails to provide any guidance with respect to the process for answering that question, thus leaving the issue to national law. A recalcitrant respondent may, therefore, have a variety of options for court challenges—based on a disparate array of national laws—in seeking to delay or at least complicate any claims subject to arbitration. This …

Blaming As A Social Process: The Influence Of Character And Moral Emotion On Blame, Janice Nadler

Faculty Working Papers

For the most part, the law eschews the role of moral character in legal blame. But when we observe an actor who causes harm, legal and psychological blame processes are in tension. Procedures for legal blame assume an assessment of the actor's mental state, and ultimately of responsibility, that is independent of the moral character of the actor. In this paper, I present experimental evidence to suggest that perceptions of intent, foreseeability, and possibly causation can be colored by independent reasons for thinking the actor is a bad person, and are mediated by the experience of negative moral emotion. Our …

Discretion, Delegation, And Defining In The Constitution's Law Of Nations Clause, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

Never in the nation's history has the scope and meaning of Congress's power to "Define and Punish. . . Offenses Against the Law of Nations" mattered as much. The once obscure power has in recent years been exercised in broad and controversial ways, ranging from civil human rights litigation under the Alien Tort Statue (ATS) to military commissions trials in Guantanamo Bay. Yet it has not yet been recognized that these issues both involve the Offenses Clauses, and indeed raise common constitutional questions.First, can Congress only "Define" offenses that clearly already exist in international law, or does it have discretion …

Jurisdiction And Choice Of Law In International Antitrust Law - A Us Perspective, Ralf Michaels, Hannah L. Buxbaum

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

International Decision, International Criminal Court, Judgment On The Appeal Of The Republic Of Kenya Against Pre-Trial Chamber Decision Denying Inadmissibility Of The Kenya Situation, Charles Chernor Jalloh

Faculty Publications

A fundamental pillar of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is Article 17, which enshrines the complementarity principle – the idea that ICC jurisdiction will only be triggered when states fail to act to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes within their national courts or in circumstances where they prove unwilling and or unable to do so. The problem is that, as shown in this case report in the American Journal of International Law on the first ICC Appeals Chamber ruling regarding a state party’s objection to the court’s assertion of jurisdiction over its nationals, …

Spatial Legality, Anthony J. Colangelo

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

For too long, state interests have dominated public jurisdiction and private choice-of-law analyses regarding the reach and application of a state’s law, or prescriptive jurisdiction. Individual rights — whether of criminal defendants or private litigants — have been marginalized. Yet states are projecting regulatory power over actors abroad with unprecedented frequency and aggression. State interest analyses proceed from the perennially critiqued but remarkably sticky concept of sovereignty. Now more than ever, legal thinkers, courts and litigants need a bedrock concept from which to build individual rights arguments against jurisdictional overreach. And it should be one that holds not only theoretical …

The Once And Future Challengesof American Federalism:The Tug Of War Within, Erin Ryan

Scholarly Publications

This essay is drawn from a lecture for the “Ways of Federalism” conference (University of the Basque Country, October 19, 2011) and a new book, "Federalism and the Tug of War Within" (Oxford, 2012) (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1991612), which explores how constitutional interpreters struggle to reconcile the core tensions within American federalism. The essay reviews the current challenges of the American federal system through the theoretical lens developed in the book, focusing on the role of state-federal bargaining within the U.S. federal system. It appears as a chapter in a book of selected conference proceedings, The Ways of Federalism in Western Countries and …

Negotiating Jurisdiction: Retroceding State Authority Over Indian Country Granted By Public Law 280, Robert T. Anderson

Articles

This Article canvasses the jurisdictional rules applicable in American Indian tribal territories-"Indian country." The focus is on a federal law passed in the 1950s, which granted some states a measure of jurisdiction over Indian country without tribal consent. The law is an aberration. Since the adoption of the Constitution, federal law preempted state authority over Indians in their territory. The federal law permitting some state jurisdiction, Public Law 280, is a relic of a policy repudiated by every President and Congress since 1970. States have authority to surrender, or retrocede, the authority granted by Public Law 280, but Indian tribal …

A Crisis In Federal Habeas Law, Eve Brensike Primus

Reviews

Everyone recognizes that federal habeas doctrine is a mess. Despite repeated calls for reform, federal judges continue to waste countless hours reviewing habeas petitions only to dismiss the vast majority of them on procedural grounds. Broad change is necessary, but to be effective, such change must be animated by an overarching theory that explains when federal courts should exercise habeas jurisdiction. In Habeas for the Twenty-First Century: Uses, Abuses, and the Future of the Great Writ, Professors Nancy King and Joseph Hoffmann offer such a theory. Drawing on history, current practice, and empirical data, King and Hoffmann find unifying themes …

The Problem Of Trans-National Libel, Lili Levi

Articles

Forum shopping in trans-national libel cases-"libel tourism"- - has a chilling effect on journalism, academic scholarship, and scientific criticism. The United States and Britain (the most popular venue for such cases) have recently attempted to address the issue legislatively. In 2010, the United States passed the SPEECH Act, which prohibits recognition and enforcement of libel judgments from jurisdictions applying law less speech-protective than the First Amendment. In Britain, consultation has closed and the Parliamentary Joint Committee has issued its report on a broad-ranging libel reform bill proposed by the Government in March 2011. This Article questions the extent to which …

Flux And Fragmentation In The International Law Of State Jurisdiction: The Synecdochal Example Of Canada’S Domestic Court Conflicts Over Accountability For International Human Rights Violations, Robert Currie, Hugh Kindred

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Any serious exploration of unity and fragmentation in public international law must consider the normative basis of one of the fundamental tools of state action on the international plane: jurisdiction. And no better illustration of the fluctuating application of jurisdiction may be had than to take a national sample – such as Canada – of domestic courts’ struggles to establish accountability for human rights conduct and abuses abroad. The paradigms of the law of jurisdiction, as with the vast corpus of international law, originally responded to the needs of the traditional verities of a legal system based around the state …

Pluralism On Appeal, Paul Gugliuzza

Faculty Scholarship

In a thoughtful response to my article, Rethinking Federal Circuit Jurisdiction, Ori Aronson notes that judges “work in context, be it social, cultural, or...institutional,” and that “context matters” to their decisions. Indeed, the primary aim of my article was to spur a conversation about the context in which the judges of the Federal Circuit — who have near plenary control over U.S. patent law — decide cases. That context includes many matters in narrow areas of law that bear little relation to the innovation and economic concerns that should animate patent law. To inject those concerns into the court’s province, …

Party Autonomy And Access To Justice In The Uncitral Online Dispute Resolution Project, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has directed its Working Group III to prepare instruments that would provide the framework for a global system of online dispute resolution (ODR). Negotiations began in December 2010 and have produced an as-yet-incomplete set of procedural rules for ODR. It is anticipated that three other documents will be prepared, addressing substantive principles to be applied in ODR, guidelines and minimum requirements for ODR providers and neutrals, and a cross-border mechanism for enforcement of the resulting ODR decisions on a global basis.

The most difficult issues in the ODR negotiations are centered …

Access-To-Justice Analysis On A Due Process Platform, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In their article, Forum Non Conveniens and The Enforcement of Foreign Judgments, Christopher Whytock and Cassandra Burke Robertson provide a wonderful ride through the landscape of the law of both forum non convenience and judgments recognition and enforcement. They explain doctrinal development and current case law clearly and efficiently, in a manner that educates, but does not overburden, the reader. Based upon that explanation, they then provide an analysis of both areas of the law and offer suggestions for change. Those suggestions, they tell us, are necessary to close the “transnational access-to-justice gap” that results from apparent differences between rules …

Gat, Solvay, And The Centralization Of Patent Litigation In Europe, Marketa Trimble

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Business Interests And The Long Arm In 2011, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Aiming At The Wrong Target: The "Audience Targeting" Test For Personal Jurisdiction In Internet Defamation Cases, Sarah H. Ludington

Faculty Scholarship

In Young v. New Haven Advocate, 315 F.3d 256 (4th Cir. 2002), the Fourth Circuit crafted a jurisdictional test for Internet defamation that requires the plaintiff to show that the defendant specifically targeted an audience in the forum state for the state to exercise jurisdiction. This test relies on the presumption that the Internet — which is accessible everywhere — is targeted nowhere; it strongly protects foreign libel defendants who have published on the Internet from being sued outside of their home states. Other courts, including the North Carolina Court of Appeals, have since adopted or applied the test. The …

Parting The Waves: Claims To Maritime Jurisdiction And The Division Of Ocean Space, Clive H. Schofield

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article casts aside traditional obsessions and examines the development and present state of coastal State claims to maritime jurisdiction, the overlapping claims to maritime space that have inevitably resulted from the significant extension of maritime claims in recent decades, and thus the delimitation of maritime boundaries.

Meaningless Comparisons: Corporate Tax Reform Discourse In The United States, Omri Y. Marian

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the role that international comparisons play in current corporate tax reform discourse in the United States. Citing the need to make the U.S. corporate tax system more competitive, comparisons are frequently used to assess other jurisdictions' tax-competitiveness, and many legislative proposals are supported by such comparative arguments. Examining such discourse against the background of several theoretical approaches to comparative law, this article argues that, to the extent that comparisons are aimed at providing guidance for prospective reform, this purpose is not well served. Participants in the corporate tax reform discourse, from both sides of the aisle, lack …