Law Commons^™

Left Behind: The Dying Principle Of Family Reunification Under Immigration Law, Anita Ortiz Maddali

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A key underpinning of modern U.S. immigration law is family reunification, but in practice it can privilege certain families and certain members within families. Drawing on legislative history, this Article examines the origins and objectives of the principle of family reunification in immigration law and relies on legal scholarship and sociological and anthropological research to reveal how contemporary immigration law and policy has diluted the principle for many families—particularly those who do not fit the dominant nuclear family model, those classified as unskilled, and families from oversubscribed countries—and members within families. It explores the ways in which women and children, …

A Story Of Three Bank-Regulatory Legal Systems: Contract, Financial Management Regulation, And Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

How should banks be regulated to avoid their failure? Banks must control the risks they take with depositors' money. If depositors lose their trust in their banks, and demand their money, the banks will fail. This article describes three legal bank regulatory systems: Contract with depositors (U.S.); a mix of contract and trust law, but going towards trust (Japan), and a full trust-fiduciary law regulating banks (Israel). The article concludes that bank regulation, which limits the banks' risks and conflicts of interest, helps create trustworthy banks that serve their country best.

Reforming Healthcare Reform, Jacqueline Fox

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, October 2016, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: • Iran and United States Continue to Implement Nuclear Deal, Although Disputes Persist • United States Continues to Challenge Chinese Claims in South China Sea; Law of the Sea Tribunal Issues Award Against China in Philippines-China Arbitration • U.S. Navy Report Concludes That Iran’s 2015 Capture of U.S. Sailors Violated International Law • United States Justifies Its Use of Force in Libya Under International and National Law • U.S. Drone Strike Kills Taliban Leader in Pakistan • U.S. Government Releases Casualty Report, Executive Order, and Presidential Policy Guidance Related to Its Counterterrorism Strike Practices • The Department …

Unilateral Responses To Tax Treaty Abuse: A Functional Approach, Omri Marian

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the attention given to abusive tax schemes that take advantage of bilateral tax treaties. The ensuing discourse tends to view potential responses to treaty abuses as a hierarchical set of options, gradually escalating, in which treaty termination is a last resort option. This article argues that the hierarchical view of unilateral responses to treaty abuse is misguided. Unilateral responses to treaty-based abuse are not hierarchically ordered. Rather, the approach to treaty abuse is (and should be) functional, adopting specific types of unilateral responses based on the type of treaty abuse …

When International Tax Agreements Fail At Home: A U.S. Example, Diane Ring

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Over the past two and a half years, the international tax community has focused on the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project (BEPS project) undertaken by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at the behest of the G20. According to the OECD, the resulting 2015 agreement involved the direct participation of more than sixty countries. An additional fifty-nine countries indirectly participated through regional dialogues. Furthermore, numerous international organizations are credited with participating in discussions and contributing to the resulting product. But, effective implementation of the BEPS agreement requires domestic action of various types—the domestic side of international agreement …

How Reform-Friendly Are U.S. Tax Treaties?, Fadi Shaheen

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This article addresses the treaty compatibility aspect of proposals for reforming the U.S. international tax system. Finding that a reform proposal is treaty compatible obviates the need for renegotiating or overriding existing U.S. treaties to implement the proposal if enacted. After establishing that a U.S. move to an exemption system would be treaty compatible despite the literal reading of Article 23 of the U.S. Model income tax treaty as requiring a credit system, the article argues that any system that is or can be expressed as an outright fixed or floating combination of exemption and credit is treaty compatible regardless …

Free Kick: Fifa’S Unintended Role In Illuminating Jurisdictional Gaps Of International Criminal Courts, Travis L. Marmara

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In the wake of the FIFA corruption scandal of 2015, certain realities have come to light. FIFA’s corruption knows no bounds, but fans of the sport will watch nonetheless. What is less apparent is that the two most prominent international criminal courts—the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) fail to have jurisdiction over the FIFA organization or its officials when they engage in white-collar crimes that sanction human rights abuses abroad. This Note examines how FIFA officials’ acceptance of Qatari bribes to host the 2022 World Cup exposed alarming jurisdictional inadequacies of the ICJ and …

Marketing Conserved Water, Mark Squillace, Anthony Mcleod

Publications

Water law scholars have long supported water markets for addressing critical water needs, especially in arid regions like the western United States, and that support seems to be growing among policymakers as well. But translating academic theories about water markets to the field has proved challenging. To be sure, water can be transferred from one use to another use in all western states, but water markets in those states are not presently capable of providing prospective buyers with a reliable source of water when and where they need it. The reasons are myriad, but are primarily related to the high …

Forgetting Nature: The Importance Of Including Environmental Flows In International Water Agreements, Amy Hardberger

Faculty Articles

From the moment States created political boundaries to define their territory, they have shared water. There are 263 transboundary lake and river basins worldwide and 300 known transboundary aquifer systems. Whenever sharing is present, the opportunity for conflict is too. Climate change and increasing population are only two factors that may lead to increasing conflict if attention is not given to these situations. Thankfully, sharing water also creates an opportunity for cooperation. Throughout the world, there are increasing examples of conflict and cooperation regarding shared water resources. International water agreements can promote regional peace and security and encourage economic growth. …

Formal Versus Functional Method In Comparative Constitutional Law, Francesca Bignami

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In the field of comparative constitutional law, the dominant approach to concept formation and research design is formal. That is, comparative projects generally identify what counts as the supreme law that can be enforced against all other sources of law based on the “constitutional” label of the positive law (written constitutions and the jurisprudence of constitutional courts) and the law books. This formal method, however, has significant limitations when compared with the functional method used in the field of comparative law more generally speaking. After a brief exposition of the functional method, this article explores the advantages of the functional …

Dead Hands, Living Trees, Historic Compromises: The Senate Reform And Supreme Court Act References Bring The Originalism Debate To Canada, J. Gareth Morley

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Recent American debates about the relationship between the historic political compromises underlying constitutional provisions and their contemporary judicial application have been largely ignored in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada has only twice referred to originalism—and never positively. But in two 2014 decisions about how central institutions of government—the Senate and the Supreme Court of Canada itself—might be changed, the Court relied on the underlying historic political compromises to interpret the Constitution, rejecting arguments from the text or democratic principle. In this article, I consider how Canadian courts have looked to history in the past and in the 2014 decisions, …

A "Barbarous Relic": The French, Gold, And The Demise Of Bretton Woods, Michael J. Graetz, Olivia Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Since the time of the French Revolution, when a gold standard saved the nation from hyperinflation, France has wanted gold to be the linchpin of international monetary arrangements. And, indeed, from the earliest use of bills and coins as money until August 1971, money was, in principle at least, a claim on gold.

At Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where in July 1944 730 delegates from 44 countries met to create the post-war international financial order, the French argued that gold – which John Maynard Keynes had described two decades earlier as a “barbarous relic” – was the key to international …

The United States, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is an example of how three branches of government can stall and derail reform initiatives. The judiciary in particular is central to the US experience with political finance reform, repeatedly striking down legislation on party finance, despite consensus from executive and legislative branches. The most recent Supreme Court ruling, in April 2014, struck down one of the last remaining federal regulations, on the overall campaign contribution limits for individuals. At a subnational level, the United States does, however, see significant variations in terms of regulations on the flow of money into politics at a state level. In …

Law And Regime Change: The Common Law, Knowledge Regimes, And Democracy Between The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Kunal Parker

Articles

Using a change in knowledge regime as a paradigm of regime change, this paper explores the career of common law thinking in the United States between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It shows how, under the pressures of anti-foundational thinking, knowledge moved from a nineteenth-century regime of “knowledge that,” a regime of foundational knowledge, to an early-twentieth-century regime of “knowledge how,” a regime of anti-foundational knowledge concerned with the procedures, processes, and protocols of arriving at knowledge. It then shows how common law thinkers adapted to this change in knowledge regimes, transforming the common law from a body of substantive …

5 Legal Developments You May Have Missed In 2015, Donald Roth

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Posting summarizing important, but less headline-making, developments in American law during the past year from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/5-legal-developments-you-may-have-missed-in-2015/

Are Legal Restrictions On Disparaging Personal Names Unconstitutional? In Re The Slants, Laura A. Heymann, Eric Goldman

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Spending Medicare’S Dollars Wisely: Taking Aim At Hospitals’ Cultures Of Overtreatment, Jessica Mantel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

With Medicare’s rising costs threatening the country’s fiscal health, policymakers have focused their attention on a primary cause of Medicare’s high price tag—the overtreatment of patients. Guided by professional norms that demand they do “everything possible” for their patients, physicians frequently order additional diagnostic tests, perform more procedures, utilize costly technologies, and provide more inpatient care. Much of this care, however, does not improve Medicare patients’ health, but only increases Medicare spending. Reducing the overtreatment of patients requires aligning physicians’ interests with the government’s goal of spending Medicare’s dollars wisely. Toward that end, recent Medicare payment reforms establish a range …

Water, Water, Everywhere: Surface Water Liability, Jill M. Fraley

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

By 2030 the U.S. will lose around $520 billion annually from its gross domestic product due to flooding. New risks resulting from climate change arise not only from swelling rivers and lakes, but also from stormwater runoff. According to the World Bank, coastal cities risk flooding more from their poor management of surface water than they do from rising sea levels. Surface water liability governs when a landowner is responsible for diverting the flow of water to a neighboring parcel of land. Steep increases in urban flooding will make surface water an enormous source of litigation in the coming decades. …

Actions And Reactions: The Evolution Of Environmental Common Law And Judicial Activism In India And The United States, Elizabeth B. Fata

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Incentives To Incarcerate: Corporation Involvement In Prison Labor And The Privatization Of The Prison System, Alythea S. Morrell

Master's Projects and Capstones

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. The United States accounts for approximately 5% of the world’s population, yet it accounts for 25% of the world’s prisoners. Not only does the United States mercilessly incarcerate its own citizens, it disproportionately incarcerates African American and Latino men. This fact on its own is disturbing; however, when it is coupled with the fact that corporations profit from and lobby for an overly aggressive and ineffective criminal justice system, makes these statistics even more horrendous. Private prison companies such as Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group admit …

Right To Act: United States Legal Basis Under The Law Of Armed Conflict To Pursue The Islamic State In Syria, Samantha Arrington Sliney

University of Miami National Security & Armed Conflict Law Review

Shortly after the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, the Islamic terror group ISIS captured the world’s attention with their rapid advance through Iraq and acts of severe brutality. In short order, the group captured large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared the formation of an Islamic State. With the integrity of Iraq in the balance, the United States committed to taking military action against ISIS but quickly discovered that as pressure was put on ISIS in Iraq they retreated into Syrian lands, where U.S. warplanes could not go.

This article explores the legal justifications for the …

Us Leaders Cave To Popular Fear On Syrian Refugees, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

Us May Be Complicit In War Crimes In Yemen, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

Comments On Public Lands: Title Transfer Proposals, Chuck Howe

Challenging Federal Ownership and Management: Public Lands and Public Benefits (October 11-13)

3 pages.

Getches-Wilkinson Center Newsletter, Fall 2015, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment Newsletter (2013-)

No abstract provided.

Will Oklahoma Put An Innocent Man To Death?, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

The Color Of Our Shame: Race And Justice In Our Time, By Christopher J. Lebron, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Ideal theory seeks to identify the basic conditions of social justice but does not tell us how to achieve them. Christopher Lebron’s important new book The Color of Our Shame is a philosophically enterprising venture in non-ideal theory, suggesting how we might bring about racial equality in America. A reader who is passingly familiar with civil rights developments of the 1950s and 1960s might imagine that racial inequality is a disappearing vestige of past discrimination; so an essential step in Christopher Lebron’s argument is to establish that racial inequality remains a grave issue half a century later. That task is …

Corruption And Development: The Need For International Investigations With A Multijurisdictional Approach Involving Multilateral Development Banks And National Authorities, Juan G. Ronderos, Michelle Ratpan, Andrea Osorio Rincon

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

We argue that while Multilateral Development Banks (“MDBs”) and national governments have mechanisms to fight corruption, the objectives and outcomes of these enforcement mechanisms diverge. MDBs are interested in the causes and effects of corruption from a development perspective and, as such, tend to sanction small and medium enterprises and individuals, while national governments are focused on a more punitive outcome, targeting larger multinational corporations. This article examines the enforcement objectives articulated in national legislation, namely the US Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act and its Canadian counterpart, the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, as well as several Canadian cases, …

Banning Bribes Abroad: Us Enforcement Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Ellen Gutterman

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The United States has been at the forefront of international efforts to combat corruption in the global economy for almost forty years, chiefly through its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act [FCPA]. Over the past decade, US enforcement of the FCPA has surged in terms of both the number of enforcement actions and the application of increasingly expansive interpretations of jurisdiction through which to enforce the FCPA on an extraterritorial basis. Extraterritorial enforcement of the FCPA has promoted anti-corruption policies and the banning of bribes abroad, but three aspects of FCPA enforcement shape and constrain the broader goals of global anti-corruption governance …