Law Commons^™

Leveling The Playing Field For Religious "Liberty" In Russia:, Afina Lekhel

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The purpose of this Note is to present a more comprehensive framework for analyzing the status of religious human rights in Russia after the enactment of the new law. Following the insights of an eminent scholar on law and religion, Prof. Harold J. Berman, the topic may be evaluated with a view to positive law (Zakon), moral theory (Pravo), and Russian historical experiences. Generally, positive law refers to domestic legal norms. Moral theory also stems primarily from domestic supra-legal sources, but it may connote global human rights principles where a state subscribes to monism, as Russia currently does. Historical contingencies …

Liberty Of Expression In Ireland And The Need For A Constitutional Law Of Defamation, Sarah Frazier

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Judicial and constitutional conservatism have allowed Irish defamation law to remain remarkably close to its English common law origins. But the common law of defamation was not designed for a modem democracy with a free press, and Ireland's libel laws have a profound effect upon freedom of expression. If Ireland is to be a modern democracy, as its constitution asserts that it is, and the European Convention on Human Rights demands, it must protect a core area of free expression in order to allow the press (without the fear of repercussion) to keep the public informed about matters of concern. …

Where's The Beef? Mad Cows And The Blight Of The Sps Agreement, Ryan D. Thomas

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Note will first outline the SPS Agreement itself--specifically, Part II attempts to present the relevant articles in a manner providing the necessary background for understanding the WTO dispute panel and Appellate Body decisions. Next, Part III discuss and critique, the dispute panel and Appellate Body decisions, specifically, noting the shortcomings of these decisions in the context of the SPS Agreement and its utility as a precedent of international dispute resolution in the area of international regulation of drugs and feedstuffs. Next, I will addresses the likely effect of these decisions upon a possible WTO resolution of the SRM dispute …

So You're Having Another Woman's Baby: Economics And Exploitation In Gestational Surrogacy, Angie G. Mcewen

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

While placing a monetary value on a product or service seems natural in many areas of society, it presents new challenges when introduced into the reproductive arena.' Society has confronted a similar debate before. Life insurance was once viewed as a form of trafficking in human lives. The acceptance of valuation in this and other areas represents a shift in cultural values that must now confront birthing arrangements.

The emergence of new reproductive technologies has ushered in new possibilities not only for women unable to bear children, but also for women willing to bear children for another, and for individuals …

The Sheinbein Case And The Israeli-American Extradition Experience: A Need For Compromise, Abraham Abramovsky, Jonathan I. Edelstein

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article will examine the political ramifications of the extradition process and the need for compromise to prevent domestic politics from undermining the ends of law enforcement. This Article will also suggest possible measures to ease the complications that extradition poses to international law enforcement cooperation. Part II of this Article will examine the facts of the most recent and dramatic example of the politics of extradition as played out in the Sheinbein case. Part III will analyze other issues which have placed obstacles in the path of practical law enforcement and international relations, and the way that the United …

The Rise Of The International Trust, Jeffrey A. Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

With considerable acuity, Carlyn S. McCaffrey and Elyse G.Kirschner explore the maze created by the new Code and treasury regulation provisions. In addition to affording a fascinating roadmap through the maze, their article, Learning to Live with the New Foreign Nongrantor Trust Rules, demonstrates the difficulty of addressing legislatively the multitude of trust arrangements that can be devised in the struggle between grantors worldwide and the U.S. tax authorities. The article also exposes the inevitable generation of unintended consequences, including new loopholes, that are a product of such legislation.

In a second tax article, Respect for "Form" as "Substance" in …

English Fiduciary Standards And Trust Law, David Hayton

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article will focus on two major areas of inquiry in contemporary English trust law: fiduciary standards and substantive trust law. In Part II it will cover the trustees' exercise of managerial discretions and of distributive discretions, before considering the role and duties of protectors in relation thereto. In Part III it will focus upon spendthrift and other protective trusts, the termination of trust rules, the hesitancy to invoke public policy to invalidate conditions imposed by settlors, and difficulties in ascertaining whether a proper valid trust has been created.

Significant Trends In The Trust Law Of The United States, Edward C. Halbach, Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In examining significant trends in American trust law, several observations are worth mentioning at the outset. First, trust law in the United States is primarily a matter of state law; thus, the trends discussed below may appear in some states but not in others. Second, procedural merger of law and equity in this country has been substantially accomplished in nearly all states, but this should not be understood as eliminating the importance of equitable doctrine and remedies. Third, without abandoning the basic definition of a trust as a fiduciary relationship, there appear to be subtle but practically significant departures from …

Respect For "Form" As "Substance" In U.S. Taxation Of International Trusts, Donald D. Kozusko, Stephen K. Vetter

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

...we might decide that the attribution rule should not be applied so broadly, or so automatically. But how would such a system be devised by regulation? The attribution rule could be applied to trusts in which the discretion of the trustee is very limited and the beneficial interests so clearly ascertainable that the trust is, for all practicable purposes, transparent. That is, however, only a small universe of cases. This leads to the further conclusion that the attribution rule has to be applied based on a facts and circumstances determination of the beneficial interest in each case. Yet that seems …

The Islamic Family Endowment (Waqf), David S. Powers

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

As part of the larger Islamic inheritance system, endowment law accorded Muslim proprietors a legal means to circumvent the effects of the Islamic inheritance rules by allocating usufruct rights to specified people in specified amounts and to regulate the transmission of those rights from one generation of beneficiaries to the next. Over time, the institution appears to have contributed to the physical integrity of both urban and rural property. Whether or not it also contributed to the economic viability of the local economy is a subject that deserves further investigation." At the same time, the transformation of significant segments of …

The Dichotomy Between Standards And Rules, Mary C. Daly

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The differences in perception between U.S. and foreign lawyer codes of conduct is more than simply a matter of academic interest or curiosity. It is only a matter of time until the WTO turns its attention to the codes, examining whether and to what extent they create illegitimate regulatory barriers to trade in legal services. As the participants in the Forum on Transnational Legal Practice have come to realize, if the legal profession is to play a meaningful role in cross-border regulation, it must seize the initiative, much as the CCBE did in 1988 with the adoption of the CCBE …

Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention In Kosovo, Jonathan I. Charney

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Kosovo during the spring of 1999 aroused controversy at the time and still provokes questions about the legality of the action, its precedential effect, and procedures for developing new international law. The participants faced a legal and moral dilemma between international law prohibitions on the use of force and the goal of preventing or stopping widespread grave violations of international human rights. This commentary seeks to chart a course for the future in light of the current legal and moral environment.

Many individuals on all sides of the Kosovo crisis …

Recent Developments In Anti-Money Laundering And Related Litigation Traps For The Unwary In International Trust Matters, Bruce Zagaris

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In 1998, governments and international organizations continued their active efforts to increase regulatory and criminal enforcement of various laws to stem the tide of transnational crime. These efforts were reflected in the criminalization of various business and financial transactions, the imposition of new due diligence measures on the private sector and the concomitant weakening of privacy and confidentiality laws, strengthened penalties for non-compliance with regulatory efforts, and new law enforcement techniques, such as undercover sting operations, wiretapping, expanded powers to search homes and businesses, and controlled deliveries. So obtrusive are many of the law enforcement techniques and the privatization of …

Emerging Leader Of The Tax Avant-Garde, Andrzej J. Burba

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In 1998, Poland's Minister of Finance Leszek Balcerowicz unveiled a plan to restructure the tax system. His fiat tax proposal promises numerous benefits to individual and corporate taxpayers with significant reduction in tax rates for both groups. The new plan offers to further strengthen Poland's growing economy--a consequence that is especially significant in light of the country's aspiration to join the European Union. It provides a remedy for virtually every ailment plaguing the current tax system and, most importantly, the reform offers to finance itself This Note argues that the plan should be adopted immediately for the following reasons: (1) …

The Innocent Buyer Of Art Looted During World War Ii, Michelle I. Tumer

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Note considers the legal issues relating to innocent buyers of looted art. After providing some historical background on the massive displacements of art that took place during World War II, the Note surveys recent developments, including the different types of disputes that have arisen in the past few years. It then provides a legal framework for analyzing one type of dispute, that of the innocent buyer of looted art.

Original owners face difficult evidentiary burdens and other litigation barriers, but law and policy nevertheless favor original owners above innocent buyers. In particular, courts have become increasingly impatient with the …

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't? The Oecd Convention And The Globalization Of Anti-Bribery Measures, Christopher F. Corr, Judd Lawler

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This article explores the efforts of the international community to battle corruption by focusing on the recently promulgated Organization of Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. For many years the United States battled corruption by prohibiting its domestic businesses from bribing foreign officials. Other countries, however, generally viewed U.S. policy as a form of unilateral commercial disarmament and declined to pass their own anti-bribery legislation. The Convention, therefore, marks a recent shift by the international community, as it requires signatories to enact laws to punish domestic corporations for bribes …

United We Stand: The Anti-Competitive Implications Of Media Ownership Of Athletic Teams In Great Britain, Jonathan E. Bush

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Note analyzes the increasing integration of the sports and broadcasting industries and the British framework for evaluating the permissibility of transactions furthering such integration. In the context of the recent attempted takeover of British football club Manchester United by Rupert Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting, the Note examines how the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) was uniquely poised to fully consider the ramifications of this developing nexus of sports and media and evaluates the significance of the MMC's decision on the future of both industries.

A diverse array of domestic, international, political, and economic issues and implications face any court …

A Comparison Of New Zealand Taxpayers' Rights With Selected Civil Law And Common Law Countries, Adrian J. Sawyer

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This article seeks to ascertain the breadth of rights that taxpayers enjoy in New Zealand in comparison with their counterparts in a number of common law and civil law jurisdictions. Such a comparison enables the wealth of experience that codification of rights in civil law countries can provide in comparison to the traditionally lower reliance on statutory protection in common law jurisdictions. From this comparative analysis common themes are distilled, as well as differences between New Zealand and various civil law and common law nations with respect to the legal position and state of taxpayers' rights. The author mounts a …

"Chevron," Cooperative Federalism, And Telecommunications Reform, Philip J. Weiser

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this Article, Professor Weiser argues that the advent of cooperative federalism statutes, like the Telecommunications Act of 1996, calls for a new conception of federal court review of state agency decisions. In particular, Professor Weiser suggests that federal statutes that invite state agencies to interpret federal law subject only to federal court review should be interpreted as calling for a deferential standard of review. Such a standard, to be sure, would allow cooperative federalism statutes to mean different things in different states. But as Professor Weiser illustrates with reference to the Telecommunications Act, the very nature of cooperative federalism …

The First Constitutional Tort: The Remedial Revolution In Nineteenth-Century State Just Compensation Law, Robert Brauneis

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article traces the change in the remedial framework of nineteenth-century owner-initiated state constitutional just compensation litigation, and explores the relationship between that change and substantive changes in just compensation doctrine. Through the Civil War, owners complaining of government-sanctioned seizure of their property brought common-law tort actions against whomever might be held liable under ordinary tort and agency law. Defendants in those suits claimed that some piece of legislation altered tort law to shield them from liability for their acts. Plaintiff owners responded that the legislation on which defendants relied was void, because it purported to authorize acts that amounted …

Critical Legal Studies, Economic Development And Human Rights, Andrew B.L. Phang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

I Introduction I want, in this essay, to contrast two approaches in the increasing quest for answers not just to the law, but to the very meaning of existence and life itself. One embodied in the Critical Legal Studies Movement,' is (with one exception) much more pessimistic; the other (which I endorse) is premised on natural law. Secondly, I propose to take this contrast into the sphere of application with respect to the issues of economic development and human rights in an East Asian context.

Lord Denning And The Influence Of William Temple, Andrew B.L. Phang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Lord Denning is probably one of the most influential English judges in the twentieth century,' and is certainly its most colourful. He recently celebrated his one hundredth birthday,2 and a symposium to honour this occasion and celebrate the life of this remarkable man was held at Buckingham University.3 Lord Denning himself was too frail to attend this symposium, although a separate (and quieter) celebration was also held in his honour at his home at the Lawn in Whitchurch. I was deeply saddened to learn that Lord Denning passed away a few weeks after, on 5th March 1999.

Three's A Crowd: A Feminist Critique Of Calabresi And Melamed's One View Of The Cathedral, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

The article critiques Calabresi and Melamed's trichotomy of property rights, arguing that it oversimplifies property as a binary relationship between subject and object, neglecting the complexities of enjoyment and third-party interests. By employing a feminist and Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, the analysis highlights how this framework fails to address the dynamic, relational, and intersubjective nature of property, particularly in environmental disputes. The author advocates for a more inclusive understanding of property that incorporates both masculine and feminine metaphors, emphasizing the need to move beyond possession and exchange to recognize the mutual constitution of entitlements and law.

[Introduction To] Tribes, Treaties, And Constitutional Tribulations, Vine Deloria Jr., David E. Wilkins

Bookshelf

"Federal Indian law... is a loosely related collection of past and present acts of Congress, treaties and agreements, executive orders, administrative rulings, and judicial opinions, connected only by the fact that law in some form has been applied haphazardly to American Indians over the course of several centuries.... Indians in their tribal relation and Indian tribes in their relation to the federal government hang suspended in a legal wonderland."

In this book, two prominent scholars of American Indian law and politics undertake a full historical examination of the relationship between Indians and the United States Constitution that explains the present …

In Praise Of The Efficiency Of Decentralized Traditions And Their Preconditions, John O. Mcginnis

Articles

No abstract provided.

Review: Murphy's Law, Arthur Jacobson

Articles

No abstract provided.

Federal Common Law In Admiralty: An Introduction To The Beginning Of An Exchange, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

Most scholars and practitioners of admiralty law have long relied upon two central assumptions regarding their subject. First, they have understood that uniformity was a requisite of maritime law such that, generally speaking, national, rather than state, law governed most maritime events and transactions. Second, they have believed that in order to preserve the uniformity of maritime law, federal admiralty courts are empowered to fashion federal common law.[1] The commitment to these related propositions has been attested to or illustrated by a collection of Supreme Court decisions.[2] For instance, in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen,[3] the case that stands as …

The New Wto Agreement On Financial Services And Chapter 14 Of Nafta: Has Free Trade In Banking Finally Arrived?, Constance Z. Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the U.S. policy rationale for seeking free international trade in financial services and assesses whether U.S. policy goals have been met through recent trade agreement negotiations. Free trade in financial services has been a goal of U.S. trade policy since the early 1980’s. Over a period of fifteen years, the United States concluded several agreements on financial services with key trading partners. The most significant agreements are the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Financial Services (FSA) and Chapter 14 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Financial Services. In both of these trade agreements, …

Unnecessary Adversaries At The End Of Life: Mediating End-Of-Life Treatment Disputes To Prevent Erosion Of Physician-Patient Relationships, Robert Gatter

All Faculty Scholarship

Professor Gatter estimates that institutional ethics consultation processes are used to resolve as many as 13,500 end-of-life treatment (EOLT) disputes each year. Despite this sizable case load, the law has largely ignored the method of dispute resolution used to address EOLT disagreements. This article argues that, at the stage when an ethics consultation is requested in an EOLT dispute, mediation is the most appropriate method for attempting to resolve that dispute. This article challenges current wisdom that mediation is inappropriate for addressing disputes between physicians and patients. The challenge is based on four key points. First, EOLT disputes between physicians …

The Constitutional Authority Of The Federal Government In State Criminal Proceedings That Involve U.S. Treaty Obligations Or Affect U.S. Foreign Relations, Malvina Halberstam

Articles

No abstract provided.