International Law Commons^™

Mr. Trump Goes To Washington Part Ii: A Review Of Richard Delgado's 2025, Kevin Johnson

Seattle University Law Review

Richard Delgado’s The Rodrigo Chronicles have captivated a generation of law students and legal scholars.  Mapping the terrain of race, racism, and Critical Race Theory (CRT), the skillful, and long-running narrative series stands as a testament to Delgado’s dedication to justice for all.

The Rodrigo Chronicles are simply one of Delgado’s many intellectual contributions and part of an unparalleled scholarly legacy.  As one of the founders of CRT, he produced a landmark body of scholarship –authoring the field's primary text,  making the argument for the regulation of hate speech,  forcefully challenging the Black/white binary of civil rights that long dominated …

The Martha Wright-Reed Act: How The Fcc Took One Step Forward For Communication Equality For Deaf Individuals In Correctional Facilities And How It Could Be Expanded, Ashley Seebold

Seattle University Law Review

For decades, phone companies preyed on incarcerated individuals and their loved ones due to the lack of regulation of jail phone calls.2 In 2021, the average cost of a fifteen-minute jail phone call was about $3.3 In 2022, the average cost rose to $5.74, while some individuals faced an extreme charge of $24.82 for the same amount of time.4 In the early 2000s, consumer advocate and concerned grandmother Martha Wright-Reed called upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fix the imbalance so she could speak to her incarcerated grandson.5 Eventually, in 2023, the FCC answered her call to action and …

Property, Recognition, And The Problem Of The Term “Debtor”: Rethinking Eligibility In Chapter 15 Cross-Border Insolvency, Jonathan Lent

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Congress knows how to draft a property requirement. There is no such requirement for a Chapter 15 debtor to seek recognition of its foreign proceeding, yet there is a circuit split on the issue. In 2005, Congress enacted Chapter 15 through the Bankruptcy Consumer Protection and Consumer Act (“BAPCPA”). The Second Circuit in In re Barnet held that section 109(a), along with its property requirement, applies in a Chapter 15 case through section 103(a), which provides that Chapter 1 of the bankruptcy code applies to Chapter 15. The Eleventh Circuit, in In re Al Zawawi, relying on jurisprudence decided under …

Pooling Responsibility: Incentivizing Cable Owners To Safeguard The Global Undersea Network, Kevin Frazier

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Foreign Judgments In U.S. Courts, Yanbai Andrea Wang

Fordham Law Review

American law on foreign judgments is at an inflection point. For over a century, the doctrine has been shaped by concerns about outgoing U.S. judgments seeking asset collection in the civil law countries of continental Europe. But shifting trade flows and changing litigation tactics have carved a new landscape, demanding a return to foreign judgments law’s conceptual and doctrinal underpinnings. This Article first maps the new landscape, in which China is rapidly rising as a foremost foreign judgments interlocutor. Meanwhile, litigants are increasingly pursuing parallel litigation in multiple countries. The impact of incoming judgments and the interactions between related litigations …

Lessons Learned From Global Responses To Criminal Abortion Laws, Cynthia Soohoo

Fordham Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Ubuntu Philosophy In Nigeria's Environmental Law: A Pathway To Sustainable Plastic Pollution Regulation, Ndubuisi Augustine Nwafor

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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

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 …

Corporate Responsibility In Business Dealings With War Criminals, Michael "Mac" Richards

Human Rights Brief

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a decades-long conflict has displaced over fourteen million people, killed over six million, and led to the highest rates of sexual violence among any other nation in the world. The DRC is the source of some of the most valuable resources used in the production of consumer electronics: gold, copper, and cobalt. Militia groups, such as Movement Du 23 Mars (M23) and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), are taking advantage of the nation’s vast mineral reserves by seizing control of local mining operations and exporting the minerals through neighboring Rwanda. These minerals …

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

American University International Law Review

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 …

Procedural Good Faith In Investment Arbitration—What Is It And What Could It Be?, Meg Kinnear

American University Business Law Review

When I selected the topic of procedural good faith for this lecture, I did not expect it to be as unwieldy as it proved to be. After all, good faith is a fundamental concept for every law student, and it anchors our approach to legal analysis and “thinking like a lawyer.” As counsel, our core belief is that proceedings must be conducted in good faith, and we each have a professional duty to act in good faith in arbitration.

Nonetheless, I am certain that each of you has witnessed conduct during an arbitration—by the opposite party, of course—that struck you …

Cold Comfort: Japan’S “Comfort Women” Litigation Under Transnational Law, Timothy Webster

Faculty Scholarship

Transnational human rights litigation has emerged as a powerful tool to remediate state and corporate abuses. Courts, however, rarely evince the same enthusiasm for these lawsuits as practitioners, scholars, and activists. For the past thirty-five years, “comfort women,” or survivors of wartime sexual exploitation, have used transnational litigation to seek redress from the Japanese government. Yet they have lost nearly all their cases. This Article uses ten “comfort women” lawsuits from Japan to test the limits of transnational human rights litigation. While judges rarely found for the comfort women, their verdicts nonetheless advanced the redress issue by showing the illegality …

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

Faculty Scholarship

Campaigns to review Japan’s wartime legacy and legal liability have recurred throughout postwar Japan. While most of these efforts have targeted the Japanese government, an important subset of actors has also focused on the role of Japanese corporations. And perhaps no one played a larger role in directing attention towards Japan, Inc. than Kim Gyeong-seok, a Korean forced laborer in the 1940s turned redress activist in the 1990s. As described in this Article, Kim’s 1991 lawsuit against Nihon Kokan launched the corporate accountability piece of the reparations project, an endeavor that continues to create ripples even now. The Article briefly …

Book Review: The Role Of Civil Society In Transitional Justice: The Case Of Russia, Myra Dahgaypaw

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This book review evaluates Selbi Durdiyeva's The Role of Civil Society in Transitional Justice: The Case of Russia as a vital contribution to genocide prevention scholarship, which is particularly timely given Russia's mass atrocity crimes in Ukraine and their connection to domestic repression. The book's theoretical innovation in challenging state-centric transitional justice paradigms through rigorous analysis of Memorial NGO, Orthodox Church activities, and revisionist groups across three decades of post-Soviet Russia is critical for the transitional justice field. It is worth highlighting Durdiyeva's unique postcolonial perspective as someone from a former Soviet territory studying the metropole, and her demonstration that …

Transnational Mass Tort Litigation: A Proposal For An International Court Of Civil Justice, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter argues for the creation of an International Court of Civil Justice for transnational mass tort cases. It considers the challenges of adjudicating cross-border mass torts along with the incentives and feasibility of a new international court. Drawing upon case studies including the Bhopal disaster, litigation surrounding the devastation of the Ecuadorian rainforest, and the attempts to sue over human rights abuses in Nigeria, the chapter demonstrates that the world's legal systems were not designed to solve these kinds of complex cases, and the absence of mechanisms to ensure coordination means that victims try, but fail, to find justice …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Competition, Comity, And Confusion: Reconciling The Ftaia’S Import Exclusion With Its Direct Effects Provision, Elliot Lam

Fordham Law Review

The debate surrounding the Sherman Act’s extraterritorial scope represents a tension between two competing objectives: protecting the U.S. economy from foreign anticompetitive conduct on one hand and respecting the sovereign authority of other nation-states on the other. Applying U.S. law abroad risks undermining sovereign authority by regulating foreign economies, though such regulation appears necessary in some cases to protect U.S. consumers.

Congress’s attempt to square these objectives through enacting the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982 (FTAIA) failed to settle the matter. The statute left courts with two new questions: how to distinguish “import” from “nonimport” commerce, and how …

Opening Remarks, Gideon Taylor

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.