Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Rethinking Social Rights From Latin America, Christian Gonzalez Chacon

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

International human rights courts and bodies have traditionally enforced social rights within constrained frameworks, such as “available resources” and “minimum provision,” often overlooking deeper structural inequalities and urgent global challenges. This paper advocates for a paradigm shift grounded in the capabilities framework, reconceptualizing rights to encompass sustainability, harmony, and human flourishing. Drawing on indigenous philosophies from Latin America, I propose strategies to strengthen enforcement mechanisms, including the establishment of specialized human rights courts, equitable taxation systems, and regenerative economic models. By aligning human rights with capabilities and ecological stewardship, this paper illustrates their potential to address poverty, inequality, and climate …

The Effectiveness Of The Hague Convention In Addressing International Child Abduction, Areej A. Dakelallah Althubiti

Theses and Dissertations

Parental child abduction is a growing concern fueled by immigration, cross-cultural marriages, evolving family dynamics, and gaps in the implementation and enforcement of developed international frameworks. This study examines the effectiveness of and challenges to the enforcement of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (HCCA), which was developed to address this problem. Specifically, the goal of this research is to assess the effect the HCCA has had on parental kidnapping, analyze its effectiveness in resolving international custody disputes, and identify the legal and practical obstacles that inhibit implementation. While the prevalence of parental kidnapping continues …

Cleaning Our Hands Of Climate Washing: Promoting Corporate Responsibility With The European Union’S Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, Parker M. Jacobs

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

“There Is No Fashion On A Dead Planet:”1 How A Mandatory Reporting Directive Shared By The Us And The Eu And Centered On Transparency Could Be The First Step To Increased Sustainability In The Fashion Industry, Adrienne Redman

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The fashion industry hangs on self-expression and individualism, yet our methods of consumption and their resulting environmental impacts are far from an individualistic concern. This paper examines the global fashion industry’s substantial contribution to pollution, resource-depletion, and waste as evidence that the self-regulation model is insufficient to curb the environmental footprint of the industry. Self-regulation presumes that consumer awareness and the desire to purchase sustainably will be enough to limit the industry’s environmental impact. However, this presumption is undermined by a lack of standardized and enforceable regulations necessary for consumer-decision making. Instead, greenwashing and deceptive environmental claims have pervaded the …

Placing The Four Rounds Of Israeli Palestinian Negotiations In The Twenty-First Century In The Context Of Ir Theory, Notably Realism Theory, Michael J. Reimer Dr

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

On October 7, 2023, Hamas unleashed a vicious attack on Israeli civilians in the southern part of Israel. The plans for this attack were likely many years in the making. Nine hundred miles of tunnels crisscrossed Gaza with the terrorist infrastructure coinciding with the location of hospitals, school, Mosques and shelters above. On October 6, 2023, the history of the four rounds of Israeli Palestinian negotiations of the earlier part of the twenty-first century had been largely forgotten and completely ignored. The Likud coalition in Israel in 2023 - 2024 was in complete agreement with Hamas’ sponsor that no negotiations …

International Compliance Codes: Reflections On Their Significance, James Fanto

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article explores the significance of international compliance codes. After describing compliance and reviewing compliance program activities and structures that have become the standard compliance mode, it looks at major U.S. and international compliance codes that helped establish and reinforce that model. It then explores reasons for the successful international diffusion of compliance, as evidenced by the international compliance codes. It particularly highlights that the compliance codes have followed a well-trodden path of international codes of business practices, which is to present them as a kind of neutral business technology. It discusses the main reason for this presentation, academic criticism …

Outlier On Lgbtq Rights: Japanese Ban On Same-Sex Marriage And Its Contradiction In The Age Of Globalization, Yumi Higashi

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Japan is the only Group of Seven country yet to recognize same-sex marriage. Despite strong public support for marriage equality, the conservative dominance of the Japanese legislature and the Japanese courts’ deferential approach have stalled the change. This Note will analyze the legal issues and implications of Japan’s failure to recognize same-sex marriage and Japan’s worldwide inheritance tax regime, with an emphasis on cross-border succession and estate planning. Specifically, the Note argues that the United States, as the only country with which Japan has a treaty in estate, inheritance, and gift tax, should renegotiate the treaty as it could have …

The False Choice Between Digital Regulation And Innovation, Anu Bradford

Northwestern University Law Review

This Article challenges the common view that more stringent regulation of the digital economy inevitably compromises innovation and undermines technological progress. This view, vigorously advocated by the tech industry, has shaped the public discourse in the United States, where the country’s thriving tech economy is often associated with a staunch commitment to free markets. U.S. lawmakers have also traditionally embraced this perspective, which explains their hesitancy to regulate the tech industry to date. The European Union has chosen another path, regulating the digital economy with stringent data privacy, antitrust, content moderation, and other digital regulations designed to shape the evolution …

A Survey Of Slavery & The Slave Trade Law, Cardozo Law Institute In Holocaust And Human Rights (Clihhr), Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights And Atrocity Prevention Clinic

CLIHHR Reports & Policy Submissions

This comprehensive report, compiled by the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention (HRAP) Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law from 2020 to 2024, surveys domestic slavery and slave trade laws across States Parties to the Rome Statute. Law students conducted comparative legal research examining how national legislation defines and criminalizes slavery, the slave trade, sexual slavery, and related practices such as trafficking and forced labor. Organized by region, the report presents constitutional and penal code provisions, assesses compliance with international humanitarian law, and highlights legal trends and gaps. It serves as a vital resource for …

Egypt’S Legal Modernism: Challenging The National Discourse, Mohamed A. El-Deeb

Theses and Dissertations

Egypt’s legal modernity is the story of the modern Egyptian state itself. Reforming the country’s judiciary in the late nineteenth century was meant to achieve ambitious aims beyond the functionality of a justice system. The utmost goal was the country’s independence from the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. The judicial reforms modernized the Egyptian state and built a judiciary and legal community like no other place. Egypt achieved its independent judiciary before gaining its political independence. That was a remarkable achievement of the judicial reform. That rich part of Egypt’s modern history is negated and disregarded from public awareness. Not …

Settler Colonialism And Ecosystem Change: How Ideology Has Shaped Minnesota’S Environments, Sarah E. Hobby

History Honors Projects

The formation of a uniquely American land ethic—defined by European political history and Christian biblical doctrine and forged through systems of dispossession—is central to the creation of environments within the United States today. Using Minnesota as a microcosm to understand how settler colonial interactions played out all across the United States, this paper analyzes connections between violent dispossession of Indigenous people and the degradation of environments. By understanding how Ojibwe and Dakota people think about and have shaped Minnesotan lands throughout their history and comparing Indigenous land-ethics to the Euro-American-settler land ethic, this paper evaluates the role that ideology and …

Thai Drug Offenses And Narcotic Charges: Tracing Thailand’S Drug Control And Capital Punishment History, Jonathan Hasson, Carolyn Hoyle

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The Article examines Thailand's political economy of drugs and use of sanctions, including capital punishment, using a historical approach. It traces Thailand's nation building and emergence as a global hub for illicit drugs against the backdrop of European and US interventions since the colonial era. The Article reveals how Western concepts and discourses were appropriated by Thai elites to advance local agendas while suppressing democratic movements. The Article explores how the drug trade became entangled with government corruption, militarization, and extrajudicial state violence which often targeted ethnic minorities. In light of recent cannabis policy changes, the Article considers the historical …

Is Usmca Good For Mexican Labor? A Preliminary Analysis Of Usmca And Labor Market Outcomes In Mexico, Diego Marroquín Bitar

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) introduced significant labor provisions aimed at bolstering labor rights and promoting union democracy, representing a departure from its predecessor, the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This paper examines USMCA’s potential benefits and limitations on labor, arguing that the trade agreement’s effectiveness in improving labor conditions in Mexico may be limited. By primarily benefitting export-oriented firms, USMCA leaves a significant portion of Mexico’s workforce untouched. Moreover, USMCA's new wage requirements, intended to raise labor standards, may paradoxically increase production costs for formal firms, potentially lowering overall productivity. This paper underscores the persistent formal-informal labor divide …

The Americans With Disabilities Act: Website Accessibility And A Foreign Solution To A Domestic Problem, James Toye

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Deborah W. Denno, Erica Valencia-Graham

Fordham Law Review

This Foreword overviews an unprecedented Symposium on these wide ranging topics titled The New AI: The Legal and Ethical Implications of ChatGPT and Other Emerging Technologies. Hosted by the Fordham Law Review and cosponsored by Fordham University School of Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center on November 3, 2023, the Symposium brought together attorneys, judges, professors, and scientists to explore the opportunities and risks presented by AI, especially GenAI like ChatGPT. The discussion raised complex questions concerning AI sentience and personal privacy, as well as the future of legal ethics, education, and employment. Although the AI industry uniformly predicts ever more …

Dinamika Kebijakan Ganja Dalam Politik Hukum Global Dan Indonesia, Aristo Pangaribuan

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

This article discusses legal and political issues related to marijuana in global literature and its influence in the Indonesian context. Moreover, this article also tries to predict the dynamics of the ongoing reform process related to Indonesian narcotic laws. To achieve such missions, mainly, this article summarizes the debate within marijuana literature and highlights its influence within the Indonesian context. The first part of this article discusses the legal and political dynamics of marijuana laws globally. Here, this article found that there is a paradigm shift toward marijuana use -- from a crime problem to a health problem. Subsequently, this …

‘Resisting’ While Collaboratively Informing In Communist Czechoslovakia, Mark A. Drumbl, Barbora Holá

Scholarly Articles

Informers in the service of state secret police collaborate with authorities and thus contribute to the power of repressive regimes. Through a case-study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945–1989)—and drawing from secret police archives– this article presents selected stories of informers who in one way or another also ‘resisted’ collaboration with the Czechoslovak State Security (StB). By doing so, we try to further complexify the notions of ’everyday resistance’, on the one hand, and ‘collaboration’ on the other. We demonstrate that resistant acts, similar to collaborative acts, can be apolitically devoid of ideology, highly idiosyncratic, and motivated by private drivers. Informing can …

Henderson And The Objective Observer Standard: The Future Of Race-Conscious Standards Post-Students For Fair Admissions, Gabriela Dionisio

Seattle University Law Review

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down race-conscious admissions policies. Within just a year after its ruling, Students for Fair Admissions has already had a sweeping impact, reaching beyond higher education. Although the Supreme Court did not indicate whether Students for Fair Admissions applies to sectors beyond higher education, law firms, and other employers have already modified their diversity policies and initiatives, erasing race and company diversity considerations. Given those dramatic changes, there is growing fear that Students for Fair Admissions …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, John Matsusaka, Chong Shu

Seattle University Law Review

Robo-voting is the practice by an investment fund of mechanically voting in corporate elections according to the advice of its proxy advisor— in effect fully delegating its voting decision to its advisor. We examined over 65 million votes cast during the period 2008–2021 by 14,582 mutual funds to describe and quantify the prevalence of robo-voting. Overall, 33% of mutual funds robo-voted in 2021: 22% with ISS, 4% with Glass Lewis, and six percent with the recommendations of the issuer’s management. The fraction of funds that robo-voted increased until around 2013 and then stabilized at the current level. Despite the sizable …

The Limits Of Corporate Governance, Cathy Hwang, Emily Winston

Seattle University Law Review

What is the purpose of the corporation? For decades, the answer was clear: to put shareholders’ interests first. In many cases, this theory of shareholder primacy also became synonymous with the imperative to maximize shareholder wealth. In the world where shareholder primacy was a north star, courts, scholars, and policymakers had relatively little to fight about: most debates were minor skirmishes about exactly how to maximize shareholder wealth.

Part I of this Essay discusses the shortcomings of shareholder primacy and stakeholder governance, arguing that neither of these modes of governance provides an adequate framework for incentivizing corporations to do good. …

The Pioneers, Waves, And Random Walks Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

After the pioneers, waves, and random walks that have animated the history of securities laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, we might now be on the precipice of a new chapter. Pritchard and Thompson’s superb book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, illuminates with rich archival detail how the Court’s view of the securities laws and the SEC have changed over time and how individuals have influenced this history. The book provides an invaluable resource for understanding nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of securities law and much needed context for …

Three Stories: A Comment On Pritchard & Thompson’S A History Of Securities Laws In The Supreme Court, Harwell Wells

Seattle University Law Review

Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson’s A History of Securities Laws in the Supreme Court should stand for decades as the definitive work on the Federal securities laws’ career in the Supreme Court across the twentieth century.1 Like all good histories, it both tells a story and makes an argument. The story recounts how the Court dealt with the major securities laws, as well the agency charged with enforcing them, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the rules it promulgated, from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. But the book does not just string together a series of events, “one …

On The Value Of History: A Review Of A.C. Pritchard & Robert B. Thompson’S A History Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Joel Seligman

Seattle University Law Review

A.C. Pritchard and Bob Thompson have written a splendid history of securities law decisions in the Supreme Court. Their book is exemplary because of its detailed use of the long unpublished papers of Supreme Court justices, including those of Harry Blackmun, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter and Lewis F. Powell, primary sources which included correspondence with other Justices and law clerks as well as interviews with law clerks. The use of these primary sources recounted throughout the text and 67 pages of End Notes deepens our understanding of the intentions of the Justices and sharpens our understanding of the conflicts …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Memories Of An Affirmative Action Activist, Margaret E. Montoya

Seattle University Law Review

Some twenty-five years ago, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) led a march supporting Affirmative Action in legal education to counter the spate of litigation and other legal prohibitions that exploded during the 1990s, seeking to limit or abolish race-based measures. The march began at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel, where the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was having its annual meeting, and proceeded to Union Square. We, the organizers of the march, did not expect the march to become an iconic event; one that would be remembered as a harbinger of a new era of activism by …

Defeat Fascism, Transform Democracy: Mapping Academic Resources, Reframing The Fundamentals, And Organizing For Collective Actions, Francisco Valdes

Seattle University Law Review

The information we gathered during 2021–2023 shows that critical faculty and other academic resources are present throughout most of U.S. legal academia. Counting only full-time faculty, our limited research identified 778 contacts in 200 schools equating to nearly four contacts on average per school. But no organized critical “core” had coalesced within legal academia or, more broadly, throughout higher education expressly dedicated to defending and advancing critical knowledge and its production up to now. And yet, as the 2021–2022 formation of the Critical (Legal) Collective (“CLC”) outlined below demonstrates, many academics sense or acknowledge the need for greater cohesion among …

Sffa V. Harvard College: Closing The Doors Of Equality In Education, Ediberto Roman

Seattle University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s recent combined decision ending affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina was hailed in conservative circles as the beginning of “the long road” towards racial equality. Others declared that “the opinion may begin the restoration of our nation’s constitutional colorblind legal covenant.” Another writer pronounced, “Affirmative action perpetuated racial discrimination. Its end is a huge step forward.” A Washington-based opinion page even declared: “[T]he demise of race-based affirmative action should inspire renewed commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity in America.” Despite …

Religious Freedom And Diversity Missions: Insights From Jesuit Law Deans, Anthony E. Varona, Michèle Alexandre, Michael J. Kaufman, Madeleine M. Landrieu

Seattle University Law Review

This Article is a transcript of a panel moderated by Anthony E. Varona, Dean of Seattle University School of Law. During the panel, Jesuit and religious law school deans discussed what law schools with religious missions have to add to the conversation around SFFA and the continuing role of affirmative action in higher education.