Law Commons^™

Principles For Policymakers, James R. Hines Jr.

Book Chapters

Multinational corporations are global goliaths, but they have not conquered the world, nor are they responsible for every economic ill, as is sometimes alleged. These firms contribute to global prosperity by improving productivity and efficiency, innovating, and creating jobs-mostly good jobs-in both home and host countries. Governments lavish attention on multinational corporations, seeking the good that accompanies their investments even as policymakers worry about the influence multinational firms have on the local environment, social conditions, and politics. In this regard, governments face the tradeoffs that commonly afflict economic policymaking. Efforts to control the actions of multinational firms typically come at …

Another Hague Judgements Convention? Bucking The Past To Provide For The Future, Louise Ellen Teitz

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Public Regulation And Private Enforcement In A Global Economy: Strategies For Managing Conflict, Hannah L. Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Business And Human Rights As A Galaxy Of Norms, Elise Groulx Diggs, Milton C. Regan, Beatrice Parance

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the last several years, there has been an increasing tendency to view the impacts of transnational business operations through the lens of human rights law. A major obstacle to holding companies accountable for the harms that they impose, however, has been the separate legal identity of corporate subsidiaries and of contractors in a company's supply chain. France's recently enacted duty of vigilance statute seeks to overcome this obstacle by imposing a duty on companies to identify potential serious human rights violations by their subsidiaries and by companies with which they have an “established commercial relationship.” Failure to engage in …

Incentive Compatible Climate Change Mitigation: Moving Beyond The Pledge And Review Model, Gabriel Weil

Scholarly Works

Climate change represents a global commons problem, where individuals, businesses, and nation-states all lack sufficient incentives to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to levels consistent with meeting their collectively agreed upon mitigation goals. The current "pledge and review" paradigm for global climate change mitigation, which many see as a major breakthrough, relies primarily on moral pressure, reputational incentives, and global public opinion to foster cooperation on mitigation efforts over and above those driven by maximization of narrow conceptions of national interests. Given the scale of the emissions reductions required to meet stated mitigation goals, the substantial economic costs of deep …

Green Foreign Direct Investment In Developing Countries, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The message is by now clear: our global economy must be fundamentally reoriented and redeployed in order to achieve the SDGs and the commitments of the Paris Climate Agreement. This requires action by all stakeholders, including non-financial and financial firms, debt and equity investors, government policymakers, and consumers. In terms of the amount of money required, it has been estimated that meeting the SDGs will require $5 to $7 trillion annually, with investment needs for developing countries amounting to roughly $3.3 to $4.5 trillion per year. While a big picture view of and strategic thinking regarding the entire economic ecosystem …

Bringing International Tax Policy Into The 21st Century, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

Michael J. Graetz delivered the following remarks at the Tax Policy Center's "A Corporate Tax for the 21st Century" conference on July 14 in Washington. These remarks are substantially taken from his April 2015 Ross Parsons Lecture at the University of Sydney Law School.

Human Rights Institute Annual Report 2014-2015, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

The Human Rights Institute sits at the heart of human rights teaching, practice, and scholarship at Columbia Law School. Founded in 1998 by the late Professor Louis Henkin, the Institute draws on the Law School’s deep human rights tradition to support and influence human rights practice in the United States and throughout the world. The activities of the Human Rights Clinic are included in the Institute’s work, enabling us to multiply our impact on the field and engage students more fully in our efforts. The Institute’s newly formed Columbia Advisory Committee provides input and feedback on the Institute’s activities and …

Connecting Law And Creativity: The Role Of Lawyers In Supporting Creative And Innovative Economic Development, Amanda M. Spratley

Faculty Publications

This article explores multiple ways in which lawyers and the legal community can connect with arts-oriented and other creative businesses to both invigorate the experience of the lawyers offering assistance and highlight ways for the legal community to position itself as relevant and helpful in the new creative economy.

This article's discussion is directed to lawyers who wish to know more about the creative economy and their position within it, but may also be informative to artists and professionals in creative enterprises by highlighting some of the legal considerations that may affect them and examining ways that seeking legal assistance …

Annual Report 2011-2012, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

Greetings from Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute We are proud to share our first annual report and our remarkable accomplishments from the past year.

The Human Rights Institute sits at the heart of human rights teaching, practice and scholarship at the Law School Founded in 1998 by the late Professor Louis Henkin, the Institute draws on the Law School’s deep human rights tradition to support and influence human rights practice in the United States and throughout the world In the past several years, the Institute and the Human Rights Clinic have become increasingly integrated, enabling us to multiply our …

When Responsive Legislation Ignores The Forest For The Trees, Matthew G. Curtis

Law Student Publications

Large-scale financial disasters have resulted in equally large-scale overhauls of the system responsible for financial industry regulation. Choice over responding parties to these disasters is minimal, and the public inevitably looks to the government for assistance and explanation. The increasingly globalized economy causes any nationwide financial regulation in the U.S. to be felt throughout international markets. U.S. environmental regulation, while not felt immediately abroad, can have drastic impacts on business planning, environmental risk-management, and human rights in the developing world.

Promoting Commercial Law Reform In Eastern Europe, Samuel Bufford

Journal Articles

This article is my account of what I did in a decade of advising governments and teaching judicial seminars on commercial law matters in Central and Eastern Europe, beginning in 1991. This article contains my individual reflections on more than a dozen visits to developing countries in Central and Eastern Europe to advise governments and to educate their judges, and several visits of judges from some of those countries to the United States. In many ways, my experiences are typical of United States judges who have done the same kind of work in developing countries. In some ways, my experiences …

Foreword: Entrepreneurism In A Flat, Green, Cash-Strapped World, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

On October 17, 2008, the Western New England College School of Law and School of Business jointly hosted the third annual Conference on Entrepreneurship and Community Economic Development (Conference). The Conference was sponsored by the Western New England College Law and Business Center for Advancing Entrepreneurship (Law and Business Center or Center) as one of its many educational outreach efforts and service projects. This issue of the Western New England Law Review provides a record of the Articles that were presented at the Conference. The Law and Business Center offers students an outstanding opportunity to apply, expand, and refine their …

Economic Analysis Of Labor And Employment Law In The New Economy, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Alan Hyde, Michael Risch, Jagdeep Bhandari, Richard Block

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

A Complex(Ity) Strategy For Breaking The Environmental Logjam, In Breaking The Logjam: An Environmental Law For The 21st Century, Beth Simone Noveck, David R. Johnson

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Reality, Theory, And A Make-Believe World: The Fundamentalism Of The Free Market, Colin Crawford, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Publications

The papers collected in this Symposium issue represent a wide range of disciplines, positions and philosophies, and reflect the views of scholars from five countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, the United States and Venezuela).

These papers reflect a range of thinking about the "freedom" that the free market is said to bring, from deeply analytical reflections to more focused case studies. In this, they reflect an equally rich series of panels and discussions that happened over three days spent in Bogota, in May 2006. These conversations, held in the comfortable surroundings of the tranquil campus of the Universidad de los Andes, …

"Race To The Bottom" Returns: China's Challenge To The International Labor Movement, Stephen F. Diamond

Faculty Publications

This article will consider four areas of concern. First, the structural changes underway in the Chinese economy are creating both domestic and international imbalances that exacerbate inequalities among Chinese workers and create new inequities in the global labor market. Second, the Chinese regime's approach to labor rights remains rigidly authoritarian and, as a result, it is triggering ever more dramatic confrontations between workers and the Chinese state, despite the regime's nominal commitment to "socialism." Third, these developments are being reinforced by a pathological evolution in the principles that govern key international institutions such as the WTO and the ILO. A …

New Social Movements And The Struggle For Worker’S Rights In The Maquila Industry, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"Campaigns to improve worker’s rights in export processing zones (EPZs), also referred to the maquila industry in Latin America, is an important topic analytically and politically. On theoretical and practical levels, the co-existence of market economies with effective means to ensure adequate working conditions for workers is a critical question. Underlying the issue is a vigorous debate regarding how the global economy should be governed; who or what should govern it, and whose interest is should serve (Faux, 2002)."

The Thirteenth Amendment And Slavery In The Global Economy, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

The globalization of industry has been accompanied by a globalization of labor exploitation. With increasing frequency, U.S.-based multinational corporations are carrying on their foreign operations through the deliberate exploitation of involuntary or slave labor. This development in the foreign labor practices of U.S. entities heralds a new era of challenge and transformation for the Thirteenth Amendment and its prohibition on the existence of slavery or involuntary servitude. It has become necessary to reexamine the range of activities in American industry - and American participation in global industry - that the amendment reaches. I begin that reexamination here. In this article, …

Global Markets, Racial Spaces And The Role Of Critical Race Theory In The Struggle For Community Control Of Investments: An Institutional Class Analysis, Elizabeth M. Iglesias

Articles

No abstract provided.

Rural Communities In An Urban Society And Global Economy, Michael Preston

The National Forest Management Act in a Changing Society, 1976-1996: How Well Has It Worked in the Past 20 Years?: Will It Work in the 21st Century? (September 16-18)

8 pages.