Law Commons^™

A No-Excuse Approach To Transitional Justice: Reparations As Tools Of Extraordinary Justice, David C. Gray

David C. Gray

It is sometimes the case that a debate goes off the rails so early that riders assume the rough country around them is the natural backdrop for their travels. That is certainly true in the debate over reparations in transitions to democracy. Reparations traditionally are understood as material or symbolic awards to victims of an abusive regime granted outside of a legal process. While some reparations claims succeed—such as those made by Americans of Japanese decent interned during World War II and those made by European Jews against Germany after World War II—most do not. The principal culprits in these …

Development And Outcomes Of Investment Treaty Arbitration, Susan Franck

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The legitimacy of investment treaty arbitration is a matter of heated debate. Asserting that arbitration is unfairly tilted toward the developed world, some countries have withdrawn from World Bank dispute resolution bodies or are taking steps to eliminate arbitration. In order to assess whether investment arbitration is the equivalent of tossing a two-headed coin to resolve investment disputes, this article explores the role of development status in arbitration outcome. It first presents descriptive, quantitative research about the developmental background of the presiding arbitrators who exert particular control over the arbitration process. The article then assesses how (1) the development status …

An Identity Crisis Of International Organizations, Sungjoon Cho

All Faculty Scholarship

An Identity Crisis of International Organizations Abstract International organizations (IOs) are ubiquitous. More than two hundred IOs touch our everyday lives, ranging banking to flu-shots. However, conventional political scientists seldom pay sufficient attention to IOs which they thoroughly deserve given their contemporary prominence. Because conventional international relations (IR) theories consider IOs as mere passive machineries, they hardly offer a satisfactory explanation on a distinctive mode of IOs’ institutional dynamic, in which a specific IO, as a separate and autonomous organic entity, grows, evolves and eventually makes sense of its own existence. This Essay offers a novel perspective which attempts to …

Wild-West Cowboys Versus Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Some Problems In Comparative Approaches To Extreme Speech, Eric Heinze

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

All European states ban some form of hate speech. US law precludes such bans. In view of the political and symbolic importance of free speech, it becomes tempting to assume that trans-Atlantic differences towards hate speech reflect deeper cultural divisions.

However, we must pay attention to comparative methodology before drawing ambitious conclusions about cross-cultural social and political differences that derive solely from differences in formal, black-letter norms. In this volume, Robert Post claims that formal, constitutional requirements of content-neutral regulation reflect a freer public sphere in the US, in contrast to the European public sphere.

Yet a legal-realist approach casts …

Behavioral Economic Issues In American & Islamic Marriage & Divorce Law, Ryan M. Riegg

Ryan M. Riegg

Vultures, Hyenas, And African Debt: Private Equity And Zambia (Private Equity Symposium), Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

A 2007 U.K. court case involving Donegal, a private equity fund, and the Republic of Zambia, has contributed to an ongoing debate about the operation of so-called vulture funds in African and other developing countries. Donegal sued Zambia for more than fifty-five million U.S. dollars in connection with a debt owed by Zambia to Romania for Zambia’s acquisition of agricultural machinery from Romania pursuant to a credit agreement dated April 17, 1979. Donegal acquired the Zambian debt from Romania in 1999 at some eleven percent of face value. Although the Donegal court explicitly limited its scrutiny to the legal questions …