Conflict of Laws Commons^™

Crossing Troubled Waters: Joining Non-Signatories In Maritime Arbitration - The Co-Optation And Containment Of Consent In United States And British Law, Glenys P. Spence

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Comity And The Non-State Actor, Microsoft: Why Law Enforcement Access To Data Stored Abroad Act (Leads Act) Promotes International Comity, Sabah Siddiqui

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Currently large email service providers, such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are refusing to comply with warrants issued under the Secured Communications Act (“SCA”) because in many instances, the requested information may be stored in servers located abroad. In the dismissed Supreme Court case, In re Warrant to Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled & Maintained by Microsoft Corporation, the Supreme Court should have addressed whether an internet service provider must comply with a warrant issued under the SCA when the requested information is stored in a foreign country and whether enforcement of these warrants would be an impermissible …

The Interpretation And Effect Of Permissive Forum Selection Clauses Under U.S. Law, Hannah L. Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A forum selection clause is a form of contractual waiver. By this device, a contract party waives its rights to raise jurisdictional or venue objections if a lawsuit is initiated against it in the chosen court. The use of such a clause in a particular case may therefore raise a set of questions under contract law. Is the waiver valid? Was it procured by fraud, duress, or other unconscionable means? What is its scope? And so on. Unlike most contractual waivers, though, a forum selection clause affects not only the private rights and obligations of the parties, but something of …

In Defense Of Territorial Jurisdiction, Cody Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

As the story is traditionally told, the minimum contacts test introduced in International Shoe v Washington freed personal jurisdiction from the dark age of territorialism and gave courts the flexibility to expand the scope of personal jurisdiction to keep pace with modern society. While scholars have critiqued the minimum contacts test on a number of grounds, the narrative that the Territorial Model was inherently problematic—and that Shoe was a step in the right direction— has gone largely unchallenged.

This Article challenges that narrative and argues for a return to the Territorial Model. While Shoe is traditionally cast as a step …

Treaty Exit And Intra-Branch Conflict At The Interface Of International And Domestic Law, Laurence R.. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter, forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law, considers two important and unresolved issues raised by unilateral withdrawal from or denunciation of treaties. The first issue concerns whether treaty obligations end in both international and domestic law after a state leaves a treaty. Exit often produces the same effects in both legal systems, but some withdrawals bifurcate a treaty’s status, ending its obligations in domestic law but continuing to bind the state internationally, or vice versa. The second issue concerns denunciations initiated by different branches of government. The decision to withdraw from a treaty is usually …

Brief Of Professor Ernest A. Young As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Plaintiff Appellant Urging Reversal, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Professors William Baude And Stephen E. Sachs As Amici Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, William Baude, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

This case presents the question whether to overrule Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410 (1979). That question requires careful attention to the legal status of sovereign immunity and to the Constitution’s effect on it, which neither Hall nor either party has quite right. The Founders did not silently constitutionalize a common-law immunity, but neither did they leave each State wholly free to hale other States before its courts. While Hall’s holding was mostly right, other statements in Hall are likely quite wrong—yet this case is a poor vehicle for reconsidering them.

Hall correctly held that States lack a constitutional immunity …

How To Fill A Procedural Loophole: Re-Evaluating The Ragan And Walker Analysis In Light Of Federal Rule Of Civil Procedure 4(M), Holly M. Boggs

Georgia Law Review

Legislatures implement statutes of limitations to
protect defendants from being brought into lawsuits for
incidents long past. However, a proceduralloophole in
the Georgiafederal court system could permit plaintiffs
to disregardstatutes of limitations and wait as long as
they please to notify a defendant of a pending claim.
The loophole exists because federal courts in Georgia
must defer to state law governing the tolling of statutes
of limitations, and that state law is procedurally
incompatible with the federal court's system. In order
to fill the procedural loophole, this Note argues that the
Eleventh Circuit should apply the federal rule-rather
than Georgia's …

Beyond The Reach Of States: The Dormant Commerce Clause, Extraterritorial State Regulation, And The Concerns Of Federalism, Peter C. Felmly

Maine Law Review

The Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution provides that “[t]he Congress shall have Power ... [t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Interpreting this explicit grant of power to Congress, the Supreme Court has long recognized the existence of an implied limitation on the power of a state to legislate in areas of interstate commerce when Congress has remained silent. Under what is referred to as the negative or “dormant” Commerce Clause, the federal courts have thus scrutinized state legislation for well over one hundred years. In the past several …

Smith V. Town Of Pittston: Municipal Home Rule's Narrow Escape From The Morass Of Implicit Preemption, Shane Wright

Maine Law Review

In Smith v. Town of Pittston, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, upheld a municipal ordinance adopted by the town of Pittston that prohibited the spreading of septage within Pittston. The majority held that Pittston's ordinance did not violate the Maine Hazardous Waste, Septage and Solid Waste Management Act (Solid Waste Management Act), which “govern[s] the disposal of garbage, sludge, septage and other waste.” The majority interpreted the “home rule” statute as granting sufficient authority to Pittston, as a municipal corporation, to enact the ordinance at issue. The dissent, on the other hand, would have held …

New Hampshire Motor Transport Association V. Rowe: Federal Preemption Of Maine's Attempt To Regulate Internet Sales Of Tobacco To Minors, Nathaniel D. Bryans

Maine Law Review

In New Hampshire Motor Transport Ass'n v. Rowe, trade associations sought a declaratory judgment that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA) preempts a Maine law enacted to facilitate collection of state taxes and restrict the delivery of tobacco products to minors (the Tobacco Delivery Law). The district court granted the plaintiffs' second motion for summary judgment in part, finding that a single provision of little independent consequence escaped preemption, and enjoined enforcement of the preempted provisions. The state appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which held that most of Maine's Tobacco …

Justice Blackmun And Preclusion In The State-Federal Context, Karen Nelson Moore

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

“I Am Undocumented And A New Yorker”: Affirmative City Citizenship And New York City’S Idnyc Program, Amy C. Torres

Fordham Law Review

The power to confer legal citizenship status is possessed solely by the federal government. Yet the courts and legal theorists have demonstrated that citizenship encompasses factors beyond legal status, including rights, inclusion, and political participation. As a result, even legal citizens can face barriers to citizenship, broadly understood, due to factors including their race, class, gender, or disability. Given this multidimensionality, the city, as the place where residents carry out the tasks of their daily lives, is a critical space for promoting elements of citizenship. This Note argues that recent city municipal identification-card programs have created a new form of …

Conflict Of Laws (2017), James P. George, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

States’ and nations’ laws collide when foreign factors appear in a lawsuit. Nonresident litigants, incidents outside the forum, and judgments from other jurisdictions can create problems with personal jurisdiction, choice of law, and the recognition of foreign judgments. This article reviews Texas conflict cases from Texas state and federal courts during the Survey period from December 1, 2015, through November 30, 2016. The article excludes cases involving federal–state conflicts; intrastate issues, such as subject matter jurisdiction and venue; and conflicts in time, such as the applicability of prior or subsequent law within a state. State and federal cases are discussed …

Hyatt V. Franchise Tax Board Of California: Perils Of Undue Disputing Zeal And Undue Immunity For Government-Inflicted Injury, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Nevada Law Journal

Twenty years ago, California reacted with suspicion to inventor Gilbert Hyatt’s move to Nevada, concluding that he had not actually changed his residency to Las Vegas in time to avoid millions in state taxes based on a lucrative patent assignment. So convinced was California, it engaged in highly questionable shadowing of Hyatt (including dumpster dives). A jury later found this shadowing sufficiently abhorrent to support a multi-million dollar damage verdict in Hyatt’s favor as part of Hyatt’s invasion of privacy/abuse of power claim. Ultimately, after two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, the verdict was substantially reduced and then limited …

Ln Mgmt. Llc Series 5105 Portraits Place V. Green Tree Loan Servicing Llc, 133 Nev. Adv. Op. 55 (Aug. 03, 2017), Wesley Lemay Jr.

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

If a homeowner that owns property in Nevada but declares bankruptcy in Texas and fails to list the Home Owners Association (HOA) as a creditor, the HOA cannot violate the automatic stay imposed by the bankruptcy and sell the property. If the property is sold in violation of the automatic stay, the sale is invalid. Under Ninth Circuit law, the sale is void ab initio while the Fifth Circuit holds that these types of sales are voidable, but can be approved by the bankruptcy court.

Chinese Conflicts Of Law: A Restatement And Legisprudence Proposal, Shaoming Zhu

SJD Dissertations

China has a long history of addressing conflict issues between different legal systems. However, there is as yet no unified legislation on Conflicts of Law in China. Rules on the topic of Conflicts of Law can be found in various legal sources without a clear structure or statement of their hierarchy and effectiveness. This research draws a comprehensive, well-organized map of Conflicts of Law rules in China by introducing the evolution of Conflicts of Law in China, defining the scope of Conflicts of Law as a legal science, restating the structure and contents of Chinese Conflicts of Law rules, and …

Amend The Communications Decency Act To Protect Victims Of Sexual Exploitation, Samantha Vardaman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

"Local Data" In European Choice Of Law: A Trojan Horse From Across The Atlantic?, T.W. Dornis

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Class Action Settlements, Cy Pres Awards, And The Erie Doctrine, Andrew Rodheim

Northwestern University Law Review

As class action settlement funds become more and more prevalent, cy pres awards have become a more common means of providing relief to absent class members. The primary purpose of cy pres awards is to provide a second-best form of relief when it is deemed impossible to directly compensate individual plaintiffs. Most often, these cy pres awards are given to some kind of charitable organization. Under federal law, class action settlements and cy pres awards are governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e). Rule 23(e)(2) requires all class action settlements to be “fair, reasonable, and adequate,” but provides no …

A Comparative Approach To Counter-Terrorism Legislation And Legal Policy, Paul David Hill Jr

Senior Honors Theses

Since the 9/11 attacks, American legislation and legal policy in regards to classifying and processing captured terrorists has fallen short of being fully effective and lawful. Trial and error by the Bush and Obama administrations has uncovered two key lessons: (1) captured terrorists are not typical prisoners of war and thus their detainment must involve more legal scrutiny than the latter; and (2) captured terrorists are not ordinary criminals and thus the civilian criminal court system, due to constitutional constraints, is not capable of adequately trying every count of terrorism. Other nations, including France and Israel, approach this problem with …

Have Prenup, Will Travel: Why England’S Law On Marital Agreements Has Attracted Forum Shoppers And How The Courts Can Fight Back, Karina Vanhouten

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This Note examines the English judiciary’s reluctance to fully accept marital agreements, and the disruptive effect this has in the global legal arena. In our increasingly international world, the fundamental events of family life—marriage, divorce, and death—often no longer occur in the same jurisdiction. In recent years, prospective divorcées from around the globe have flocked to England to take advantage of the country’s matrimonial law, which generally favors the party seeking to invalidate or minimize a marital agreement. This forum-shopping phenomenon is problematic because English courts regularly disregard foreign marital agreements that would be valid and binding in other jurisdictions, …

The Missouri Student Transfer Program, Howard E. Fields Iii

Dissertations

In 1993, the state of Missouri passed the Outstanding Schools Act. This law was created as a means to ensure that “all children will have quality educational opportunities, regardless of where in Missouri they live.” Section 167.131 of this law states that an unaccredited district must pay the tuition and transportation cost for students who attend an accredited school in the same or adjoining district. This portion of the law became known as the Student Transfer Program.

The Riverview Gardens School District (RGSD) was one of three unaccredited school districts in the state of Missouri in 2013. With close to …

The Return Of The Unprovided-For Case, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Parochial Procedure, Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The federal courts are often accused of being too parochial, favoring U.S. parties over foreigners and U.S. law over relevant foreign or international law. According to what this Article terms the “parochial critique,” the courts’ U.S.-centrism generates unnecessary friction with allies, regulatory conflict, and access-to-justice gaps. This parochialism is assumed to reflect the preferences of individual judges: persuade judges to like international law and transnational cases better, the standard story goes, and the courts will reach more cosmopolitan results.

This Article challenges that assumption. I argue instead that parochial doctrines can develop even in the absence of parochial judges. Our …

Twenty Reasons To Publish In Dignity, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

What's The [Irreparable] Harm?: Incentivizing Creativity Through Preliminary Injunctions In Copyright Law, Arielle Matza

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Anchoring More Than Babies: Children's Rights After Obergefell V. Hodges, Susan Hazeldean

Cardozo Law Review

The Supreme Court's recent decision upholding a constitutional right to samesex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges was a huge advance not just for LGBT Americans, but also for children. Obergefefl suggests children have a fundamental right to be raised by their parents without being demeaned or marginalized by the state. This has important implications for other vulnerable children, including U.S. citizen children with undocumented parents. This Article argues that deporting these children's parents contravenes their fundamental right to be raised by a loving parent, to equal protection of the law, and to remain in the United States as U.S. citizens. …

A Human Rights Perspective To Global Battlefield Detention: Time To Reconsider Indefinite Detention, Yuval Shany

International Law Studies

This article discusses one principal challenge to detention without trial of suspected international terrorists—the international human rights law (IHRL) norm requiring the introduction of an upper limit on the duration of security detention in order to render it not indefinite in length. Part One of this article describes the “hardline” position on security detention, adopted by the United States in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks (followed, with certain variations, by other countries, including the United Kingdom and the State of Israel), according to which international terrorism suspects can be deprived of their liberty without trial for the …

The Limits Of Inviolability: The Parameters For Protection Of United Nations Facilities During Armed Conflict, Laurie R. Blank

International Law Studies

This article examines the international legal protections for United Nations humanitarian assistance and other civilian facilities during armed conflict, including under general international law, setting forth the immunities of the United Nations, and the law of armed conflict (LOAC), the relevant legal framework during wartime. Recent conflicts highlight three primary issues: (1) collateral damage to UN facilities as a consequence of strikes on military objectives nearby and military operations in the immediate vicinity; (2) the misuse of UN facilities for military purposes; and (3) direct attacks on fighters, weapons or other equipment that cause damage to such facilities. To identify …