International Law Commons^™

Table Of Contents

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Dedication

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Indeterminacy Of Customary International Law, Mohamed Diaa Tawfik

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the judicial formation of customary international law and examines how international courts oscillate between interpretive and law-making functions. It analyzes key theoretical frameworks—including Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law, Dworkin’s Law as Integrity, Kennedy’s radical indeterminacy, and Koskenniemi’s Descending-Ascending Approach—to understand how courts assert and shape customary norms beyond mere state practice and opinio juris. The work concludes that the International Court of Justice and other tribunals increasingly act as de facto lawmakers under the guise of interpretation, advocating the indeterminacy they try to avoid.

Adversarial Comparativism: The Role Of Emotion In United States–China Comparative Law Projects, Matthew S. Erie

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Contemporary comparative law operates across a landscape riven by protectionism, nationalism, and securitization, all of which complicate comparative law projects. Nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S-China relationship, the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Despite economic “delinking,” the U.S. and Chinese legal systems are interacting more than ever; however, how this interaction works is poorly understood. This Article proposes “adversarial comparativism” to explain this dynamic. It is an approach to comparative law and politics that includes different modalities: competition, aggressiveness, transactionalism, misunderstanding, opportunism, and gaslighting. Many of these are underpinned by emotion. As such, while this …

Reviving Novorossiya: Russia’S Invasion Of Ukraine Under International Law

Washington International Law Journal

Abstract: For nearly three years, the Eastern European nation of Ukraine has been entangled in a war it did not instigate, did not desire, but was forced into by its more powerful neighbor, Russia. Since the onset of the war, Russia has faced accusations of widespread atrocities, including severe violations of human rights, international humanitarian law, and breaches of other international norms. Following the inauguration of United States (US) President Donald Trump, there has been a renewed effort to bring both parties to the negotiating table and end the conflict. With the ongoing negotiations, there is no better time to …

The Stripes Of Glory We Wear: Reflections Of The Legal Role And Intricacies Of Citizenship In The History And Foundation Of The Malaysian State

Washington International Law Journal

Abstract: The meaning of citizenship in Malaysia is a tale as old as the country itself—a thorny triangular relationship between the state; the Bumiputera majority of Malay and indigenous natives; and the non-Bumiputeras minority of Chinese and Indians who primarily migrated when the region was under British colonial rule and influence. In the present, Bumiputeras enjoy a constitutionally stipulated special status—a distinction that bestows many privileges and preferential treatment in all facets of life, from commerce to education, homeownership to government employment, that is off-limits to non-Bumiputeras. Supporters of the system argue it remains necessary—a form of affirmative action …

Nondo V. Tanzania: Afchpr Signals Its Resolve On Democratic Preservation, Maggie Titus

Human Rights Brief

On September 15, 2025, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) reopened the pleadings in Abdul Omary Nondo & Others v. United Republic of Tanzania. Applicants Abdul Omary Nondo, Deusdedit Valentine Rweyemamu, and Paul Revocatus Kaunda each filed separate applications against Tanzania challenging alleged conflicts between the Tanzania’s Constitution and its obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Charter), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). All three applications were filed on November 19, 2020, and served to the State on December 3, …

Restoring The Organization For The Security And Cooperation In Europe’S Role In Human Rights And Security After Russian Invasion, Roman Nekoliak

Human Rights Brief

This Article diagnoses a systemic erosion of rights-based multilateralism driven by geopolitical realignment, reduced leadership by traditional human rights defenders, the rise of authoritarian coalitions, and the growth of transactional and securitized diplomacy. This Article argues that revitalizing the Organization for the Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) around a rights-centered, cross-dimensional concept of security is essential to restoring both regional stability and the credibility of international human rights commitments. It places the war in Ukraine within broader patterns of democratic backsliding, institutional paralysis, and the rise of authoritarian governance, demonstrating how domestic repression and interstate aggression mutually reinforce one …

From Russia Without Love: A Unique Path Forward For Western Asset Holders Looking To Recover Expropriated Property In Russia, Anthony Liberatori

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Chelsea Football Club, Sean Baker’s Academy Award-winning film “Anora,” and billionaire parties in St. Barth’s: the rapid rise of Russian capital since the collapse of the Soviet Union has permeated international popular culture and underscores the modern global economy. However, Vladimir Putin’s invasions into Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 have caused the international community — particularly the West — to sanction Russia, challenging its place in an increasingly globalized supply chain, and harkening anti-Russian sentiment not seen since the Cold War. In response to sanctions, Russia has begun nationalizing Western assets left behind within its borders, leaving company owners scrambling …

Presidential Power And Global Finance: The Rise And Limits Of Financial Warfare, Michael Glanzel

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The president’s power over global financial transactions has become one of the most potent tools in America’s foreign policy arsenal. Since the outbreak of World War I, presidents have frequently employed financial instruments to coerce or punish foreign actors. But it was President Biden’s employment of financial weaponry in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that represented the most complex and far-reaching exercise of presidential power in global finance. From weakening the Russian central bank’s access to the dollar market, to cutting off key Russian financial institutions from American lenders, to deplatforming Russian entities from the Society for Worldwide …

A Democratic Consultative Constitutionalism For Marxist-Leninist (Socialist) Political Systems—The Theory And Structure Of “Whole Process People’S Democracy” (全过程人民民主), Larry Catá Backer

American University International Law Review

The Chinese Socialist (Marxist-Leninist) constitutional order has recently fully elaborated a theory and practice of democracy, one that has been offered as an alternative model to liberal democratic theory and practice. In contemporary China, this evolution has taken concrete form as the form of 全过程人民民主 (Whole Process People’s Democracy (WPPD)). This essay examines this emerging theory of Chinese democracy both within the structure of Chinese constitutionalism and as an expression of its Marxist-Leninist foundations. The essence of the distinction of this form of democratic theory with classical liberal democracy is the centrality of consultation rather than elections in this system; …

Dokdo/Takeshima And Maritime Delimitation Between The Republic Of Korea And Japan: A Comment On Icj Dispute Resolution, Katherine Angell

Celebrating WCL Student Authors

The Republic of Korea (Korea) should agree to submit the issue of sovereignty over Dokdo/Takeshima and the issue of maritime delimitation in the East Sea/Sea of Japan to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) because the ICJ is likely to decide that Dokdo/Takeshima is Korean territory and the tensions in the East Sea/Sea of Japan can be resolved to allow further cooperation between the two nations. The ICJ is the primary avenue for peacefully resolving territorial and maritime delimitation disputes between nations, and the ICJ has developed a substantial body of case law analyzing these issues. The ICJ considers various …

Legislative Support Of Religious Policy In Ukraine Under Martial Law, Volodymyr Karpunets, Andrii Shevchuk, Oleksandr Bilchuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article examines the legislative framework of Ukraine's religious policy under the conditions of martial law caused by the full-scale armed aggression of the Russian Federation. The constitutional foundations of state-confessional relations are analyzed, particularly the provisions of Article 35 of the Constitution of Ukraine on freedom of conscience and religion, as well as Article 64, which provides for the possibility of temporary restrictions on religious rights under martial law. Key legislative acts are reviewed: the Laws of Ukraine "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations" (1991, with amendments in 2018 and 2019), "On the Legal Regime of Martial Law" …

Beyond Borders: Transnational Repression As A System Of Authoritarian Control In Russia, Kazakhstan, And Kyrgyzstan, Jasmine D. Cameron

Human Rights Brief

This Article examines transnational repression, state-sponsored persecution of citizens, human rights defenders, journalists, members of diaspora, and critical voices located outside physical borders, as a systemic tool of political control employed by Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Based on analysis of legislation, published reports, UN Special Rapporteur findings, and case files, this Article provides three case studies that demonstrate different stages of an escalating trend towards transnational repression systems. From Kyrgyzstan, where the government has started to develop and implement harmful practices to persecute its citizens abroad, to a more established system in Kazakhstan, where numerous incidents of transnational repression showed …

B.T. And B.K.Cs. V. Hungary: Separating Roma Children From Their Mothers Before Births, Sara Apostol

Human Rights Brief

In June of 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in favor of a Roma mother, B.T., and her son after bringing a lawsuit against the Hungarian government for wrongfully violating their right to family life. The Hungarian government ordered the placement of B.T.’s unborn child into State care based on insufficient and dubious evidence used to justify such state action. This case focused on the prejudiced system that places Roma children into the State’s guardianship immediately after birth without evidence of imminent harm or other valid justification. Rather, it is based on the child’s ethnic and socio-economic …

“Durable Solutions” Revisited: Italy’S Train-To-Hire Pathway Under The Cutro Decree As Alternative Refugee Protection, Tim Streit

Human Rights Brief

I. Introduction

If the average person were asked to imagine a refugee, they might conjure the image of a migrant fleeing war or persecution, showing up at the border of a new country with a few belongings in hand, and asking not to be sent back to the dangerous place from which they came. In fact, it is not only the hypothetical “average person” who pictures this scenario. The international refugee protection system, developed after World War II through the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) and its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees …

Migration In Context And Law: Global Displacement And The U.S. Immigration System, Saya Khandar, Dominic Brunaccioni, Samantha Johnson, Nisa Manzar, Lindsey Nye, Alexis Stephens, Sherise Tracey

Human Rights Brief

On February 20, 2026, the Human Rights Brief at American University Washington College of Law (WCL) held its annual symposium, titled “Migration in Context and Law: Global Displacement and the U.S. Immigration System.” This symposium was curated in response to intensified immigration operations across the United States (U.S.), which have resulted in significant harm to individuals and families nationwide. The discussion centered on the humanity of immigration and explored how global displacement, armed conflict, economic instability, and climate change continue to shape migration. Organizers brought together legal scholars, practitioners, and advocates to examine current immigration policies in the context of …

Stability And Accountability In Nagorno-Karabakh And The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict, Callum Heath

Human Rights Brief

I. Introduction

On August 8, 2025, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia were hosted at the White House by U.S. President Donald Trump to announce the Agreement on Establishment of Peace and Inter-State Relations (the Agreement) in a Joint Declaration. The Agreement sets out to end the decades-long conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Armenian ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan, and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, which is separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by Armenia. While the White House hails the Agreement as a “historic peace deal,” the reality is more …