International Law Commons^™

Retooling The Ilo: How A New Enforcement Wing Can Help The Ilo Reach Its Goal Through Regional Free Trade Agreements, Thomas Payne

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Raising global labor standards has been a goal of labor activists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and nations for over a century. The International Labor Organization (ILO) was created nearly one hundred years ago for that purpose, but a century later its goal remains largely unfinished. This paper will propose a retooling initiative for the ILO that will give it the enforcement power it needs for real labor standard change and the resources it needs to use that enforcement power to promote work according to established international labor standards. This enforcement power will take place through regional free trade agreements (RFTAs), which …

The Domino Effect: How Inadequate Intellectual Property Rights In The Fashion Industry Affect Global Sustainability, Cassandra Elrod

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This note discusses an unexplored problem at the nexus of fashion and intellectual property law: how "fast fashion" leads to unsustainability of global resources and human rights issues pertaining to overseas manufacturing facilities. This unnecessary chain of events could be avoided if fashion designers were granted more substantial intellectual property rights rather than an overall lack of protection. Instead of turning a blind eye to the consequences of consumer demand and "fast fashion," Congress needs to address these issues head on through legislation that mirrors some of the copyright protections afforded fashion designers overseas

Reactions To Hybrid Mismatch Arrangements And Strategy Suggestions For Korea, Aju Nam

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project has been one of the biggest issues in international taxation. The OECD refers to BEPS as “tax avoidance strategies that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations.” In 2014, the OECD released BEPS Action 2 as responds on Hybrid Mismatch Arrangements (“HMA”s), which are arrangements exploiting differences in the tax treatment of instruments, entities or transfers between two or more countries. Two of the major factors of HMAs are hybrid entities and hybrid …

A Lex Mercatoria For Corporate Social Responsibility Codes Without The State? A Critique Of Legalization Within The State Under The Premises Of Globalization, Larry Catá Backer

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Recent efforts have sought to theorize the legalization of the social and economic sphere that is undiminished by time. Though the context has changed over time, the project remains the same-to embed behavior control within a network of mandatory proscriptions attached in some authoritative way to the state. Corporate social responsibility has been bound up in corporate codes of behavior and related private governance standards systems. In that form, it serves as a key site for the evolution of legalization and legitimacy in governance. That evolution appears to take corporate social responsibility from its twentieth century formalist rigidity into something …

Corporate Codes As Private Co-Regulatory Instruments In Corporate Governance And Responsibility And Their Enforcement, Jan Eijsbouts

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) codes have gained a prominent role as tools in self-regulation for companies to establish their basic values, norms, and rules that condition the conduct of directors, managers, employees, and-increasingly-of suppliers. This development must be seen in the light of two important paradigmatic changes in the concepts both of CSR and corporate governance. The former is no longer purely voluntary and the latter has become inclusive of CSR, each with far-reaching consequences for the raison d'itre and the place and function of the codes in the smart regulatory mix governing corporations. While the codes were based originally …

Security Council Resolution 2178 (2014): An Ineffective Response To The Foreign Terrorist Fighter Phenomenon, Cory Kopitzke

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Thousands of foreign terrorist fighters poured into the Middle East from almost every country across the globe. Radicalized by professionally edited videos and propaganda disseminated through the Internet, people from all walks of life were captivated by the Islamic State's rhetoric, and nations were struggling to figure out how to stop them. One solution came in the form of a United Nations Security Council Resolution- Resolution 2178 (2014). This resolution is directed specifically at foreign terrorist fighters and calls upon all Member States to act with haste to address this new phenomenon. Critics were quick to call into question the …

A Treaty On Enforcing Human Rights Against Business: Closing The Loophole Or Getting Stuck In A Loop?, Pierre Theilbörger, Tobias Ackermann

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Article takes a human rights law perspective on the issue of enforcing corporate social responsibility. While corporations receive a variety of rights under international law, they do not equally hold a corresponding set of duties. The Article assesses the merits and shortcomings of existing initiatives to bridge this gap, in particular the Special Representative to the Secretary-General's (legally nonbinding) Framework and Guiding Principles, as well as the most recent initiative at the United Nations Human Rights Council on developing a (legally binding) treaty on business and human rights. While emphasizing that existing legal frameworks-such as human rights law, international …

Transnational Constitution-Making: The Contribution Of The Venice Commission On Law And Democracy, Paul Craig

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission. While part of the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission is much less understood than the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), notwithstanding the existing literature. This chapter therefore seeks to explicate and evaluate. It begins by explicating the organizational foundations of the Venice Commission, followed by analysis of its remit and role. The focus then shifts to triggering and working methodology.

The remainder of the article is concerned with evaluation of the Commission’s role in relation to constitution-making as broadly conceived, the analysis being situated within the literature …

Constructing Citizenship Through War In The Human Rights Era, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

War's historical relationship to the creation of territorial nation-states is well known, but what empirical and normative role does war play in creating the citizen in a modern democracy? Although contemporary theories of citizenship and human rights do not readily acknowledge a legitimate, generative function for war - as evidenced by restrictions on aggression, annexation of occupied territory, expulsions, denationalization, or derogation of fundamental rights - an empirical assessment of state practice, including the interpretation of international legal obligations, suggests that war plays a powerfully transformative role in the construction of citizenship, and that international law and norms implicitly accept …

Transnational Legal Ordering And Regulatory Conflict: Lessons From The Regulation Of Cross-Border Derivatives, Hannah L. Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper is about the theory and practice of transnational legal ordering. It seeks to gain insight into how transnational legal orders advance by examining one particular problem: the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives. It focuses on events following the global financial crisis, which exposed the deficiencies of the existing regulatory order in identifying and containing the risks created by trading in those securities. In the aftermath of the crisis, the cross-border systemic risk created by OTC derivatives trading was characterized as a problem of global dimension that necessitated a global response. A wide array of actors and institutions, both domestic …

The U.S. Election Hacks, Cybersecurity, And International Law, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Birds Of A Feather: Patterns Of Judicial Decision-Making At The International Court Of Justice, 1946-2015, Kai-Chih Chang

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The technical legal expertise of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, is rarely questioned. However, from its inception critics have questioned its partiality by drawing attention to apparent extrajudicial influences on its decisions. While there has been no lack of research assessing the ICJ judges’ voting behavior, methodological limitations of prior research designs have stymied empirical assessments of the extent and nature of extrajudicial factors’ influence over the ICJ judges’ voting behaviors. This dissertation challenges previous research concluding that political and military alignments have no effect on judicial decision-making. In contrast to …

Rethinking Article 422: A Retrospective On Ecuador's 2008 Constitutional Isds Recalibration, Alexander B. Avtgis

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

Is Ecuador’s adoption of Article 422 in the 2008 Constitution properly viewed as a “re-statification”1 of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)? And, since its implementation, has the constitutional article been effective in institutionally insulating Ecuador from the jurisdictional reach of international ISDS? This paper answers both questions in the negative—but qualifies such an outlook by balancing the drawbacks of Article 422 against its successes. Article 422’s provisions, strident in its attempt to create an alternative development vision, did not achieve all that the Constitution’s drafters had hoped. Nevertheless, in its limited effect of detaching Ecuador from certain ISDS fora, it …

The Politics Of Electoral Systems In The Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia, Dardan Berisha

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (“FYROM”) experienced four major changes to its electoral system in the eight parliamentary elections held between 1990 and 2014. The Macedonian 1990 and 1994 parliamentary elections were held under a majority system, in which 120 members of the Parliament were elected from 120 constituencies, one member per constituency. A mixed-majority/proportional representation (“PR”) system was adopted for the 1998 elections, in which eighty-five seats were elected under the majority system from the constituencies, and thirty-five seats were elected proportionally from a nation-wide electoral district. Yet another system was adopted for the 2002 elections, in which …

Espionage As A Sovereign Right Under International Law And Its Limits, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The literature surrounding the international legality of peacetime espionage has so far centered around one single question: whether there exist within treaty or customary international law prohibitive rules against the collection of foreign intelligence in times of peace. Lacking such rules, argue the permissivists, espionage functions within a lotus vacuum, one in which States may spy on each other and on each other's nationals with no restrictions, justifying their behavior through the argumentum ad hominem of "tu quoque." . . .

Toward An International Constitution Of Patient Rights, Alison Poklaski

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the past decade, medical tourism-the travel of patients across borders to receive medical treatment-has undergone unprecedented growth, fueled by the globalization of health care and related industries. While medical tourism can benefit patients through increased access to treatment and cost-savings, medical travel also raises concerns about ensuring quality of care and legal redress in medical malpractice. Moreover, existing regulations fail to address these unprecedented issues. The multilateral adoption of an International Constitution of Patient Rights (ICPR) is necessary in order to more effectively preserve medical tourism's benefits and guard against its risks.

Surrogacy And Citizenship: A Conjunctive Solution To A Global Problem, Caitlin Pyrce

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

People around the world are turning to surrogacy when they are unable to conceive by traditional means. When surrogacy turns traditional notions of parentage upside down, however, countries struggle to find efficient regulations that protect their own citizens, while still recognizing the increasingly global nature of modern society. Children born through surrogacy arrangements between Thai surrogate mothers and Australian intended parents have been confronted with the consequences of inadequate regulation. This note argues that in addition to revising surrogacy legislation to reflect the increasingly transient nature of society, countries must make mirror citizenship reform so children born through surrogacy are …

The Esa Guidelines: Soft Law And Subjectivity In The European Financial Market-Capturing The Administrative Influence, Jakob Schemmel

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The disastrous performance of European financial-market regulation during the 2008 financial crisis convinced the European powers-that- be of the urgent need for further integration. Since then the European Union (EU) has established three European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs), which are commissioned to enhance capacity and harmonization of the European banking, insurance, and capital markets law. In carrying out this task, the ESAs employ so called ESA Guidelines, which have caught the attention of practitioners and scholars alike. As soft law, they bear a strong resemblance to instruments used on the global level to regulate the financial markets and therefore might fall …

State Ownership And The United Nations Business And Human Rights Agenda: Three Instruments, Three Narratives, Mikko Rajavuori

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The rise of globally-oriented state ownership has emerged as a crucial issue across political, economic, and legal planes during the past decade. Contrary to the traditional approach where state ownership is viewed primarily through trade law, antitrust law, and corporate law, this article discusses the proliferating state shareholder power in relation to international human rights law. In particular, the article interrogates three recent U.N. human rights governance instruments by using narratives that highlight perils, potential, and specialty of state ownership in the emerging business and human rights agenda. It is argued that the U.N. instruments realize the changes in the …

Taking To The Sea: The Modern Seasteading Movement In The Context Of Other Historical Intentional Communities, Megan Binder

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Though its mission may seem to belong to the realm of science fiction-establishing self-sufficient, floating cities on the high seas-the modern seasteading movement is simply the next iteration of mankind's long quest to establish more perfect societies. If they wish to accomplish their goals, seasteaders must be prepared to confront and overcome serious obstacles on technological, social, and legal fronts. Reviewing other historical examples of intentional communities offers a glimpse of the potential challenges that are common across all such movements and suggests that, to ensure long-term success, seasteaders may benefit longterm from pursuing international recognition of sovereignty for their …

Will The Ebola Epidemic Serve To Make Reform Of The Broken Health Research And Development Framework Go Viral?, Jeremy Mcdonald

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa has captured the public imagination as few other epidemics have, as its rapid spread and lethal effect demonstrated the devastating toll that infectious diseases can exact from a world unprepared to confront them. In light of the epidemic's tragic consequences, numerous experts have called for reform of the system of global health governance whose shortfalls allowed the epidemic to assume the horrifying dimensions it did. Among the many inadequacies that the outbreak uncovered is the insufficient amount of research into and development of treatments and vaccines for infectious diseases of poverty, among them …

Terra Firma As Open Seas: Interpreting Kiobel In The Failed State Context, Drew F. Waldbeser

Indiana Law Journal

This Note will ultimately argue that, despite the expansive language in Kiobel, the Court’s reasoning does not necessarily foreclose all “foreign-cubed” claims. Suits alleging human rights violations originating from conduct that took place in failed states avoid the concerns the Court emphasized in Kiobel. The Court should allow jurisdiction for human rights offenses in failed states, despite their “foreign-cubed” nature, because the already existing rationale for allowing jurisdiction for international piracy offenses is highly analogous.

Part I of this Note explores the ATS jurisprudence leading up to and including Kiobel. Besides exploring the tensions and policy interests courts are grappling …

“I Must Tell The Whole World”: Septimus Smith As Virginia Woolf’S Legal Messenger, Riley H. Floyd

Indiana Law Journal

This Note explores the disjunctive moral gap between a civilian ethic of mutual responsibility and the laws of war that eschew that ethic. To illustrate that gap, this Note conducts a case study of Virginia Woolf’s rendering of shell shock in her 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway. The war put mass, mechanized killing at center stage, and international law permitted killing in war. But Woolf’s character study of Septimus Smith reveals that whether war-associated killing is “criminal” requires more than legal analysis. An extralegal approach is especially meaningful because it demonstrates the difficulty of processing and rationalizing global conflict that plays …

Citizens Of Sinking Islands: Early Victims Of Climate Change, Erin Halstead

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Note discusses the effects of climate change that threaten Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Specifically, with increasing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting in rising sea levels and higher frequency of extreme weather events, many citizens of SIDS are forced abandon their homelands, which are no longer livable. Although SIDS are some of the smallest contributors to GHG emissions, and therefore contribute the least to climate change, SIDS are some of the countries most heavily affected by the negative effects of climate change. The global community has an obligation to accommodate these displaced people, partially due to the significant …

Absolute Conflicts Of Law, Anthony J. Colangelo

Indiana Law Journal

This Article coins the term “absolute conflicts of law” to describe situations of overlapping laws from different states that contain simultaneous contradictory commands. It argues that absolute conflicts are a unique legal phenomenon in need of a unique doctrine. The Article extensively explores what absolute conflicts are; how they qualitatively differ from other doctrines like true conflicts of law, act of state, and comity; and classifies absolute conflicts’ myriad doctrinal manifestations through a taxonomy that categorizes absolute conflicts as procedural, substantive, mixed, horizontal, and vertical.

The Article then proposes solutions to absolute conflicts that center on the rule of law …

Decentering Human Rights From The International Order Of States: The Alignment And Interaction Of Transnational Policy Channels, Radu G. Mares

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article accounts for recent developments in corporate social responsibility, international trade and investment law, international human rights law, development aid, and the laws of home states reaching extraterritorially in order to advance a regulatory perspective on commerce and human rights. While these developments are remarkable, the analysis documents the prevalence of softer strategies and a corresponding scarcity of coercive legalization strategies. The question, then, is how to reason about these recent developments and their genuine potential for human rights protection. The article proposes two elements-a root-cause orientation and the interaction of policy channels-as indispensable for a regulatory and systemic …

The Language Of Data Privacy Law (And How It Differs From Reality), Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson, Orla Lynskey, Christopher Millard

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Global Human Rights Law And The Boundaries Of Statehood, Daniel Augenstein, Hans Lindahl

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The contributions collected in this Special Issue are the outcome of a colloquium on "Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood" held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa in March 2015. The colloquium is the first in a series of topics to be addressed within the STIAS research project, "Boundaries and Legal Authority in a Global Context," coordinated by Hans Lindahl and Louise du Toit. We would like to express our gratitude to STIAS for the funding and logistics of the colloquium. Our particular thanks are due to the director of STIAS, Hendrik …

The Temporal Rivalries Of Human Rights, Fleur E. Johns

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Nation-states' "boundaries" are produced in time: around official working hours and terms of office, for instance, and in the historicomythic "life of the nation." Global human rights practices affirm and depend on nation-states' temporal authority, while also calling that authority into question. In different ways, global markets do likewise. In recent decades, the ubiquity of both finance capital and international human rights law, among other factors, may have encouraged the fracturing of time into intervals of ever-decreasing length. Temporal authority premised on the long-term seems to have declining purchase, even as historicism and futurism abound, discouraging some modes of state-based …

Corporations And The Limits Of State-Based Models For Protecting Fundamental Rights In International Law, David Bilchitz

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

At the heart of international law lies a central tension. On the one hand, the fundamental rights recognized in international treaties protect the fundamental interests of individuals, obligating all actors who can affect these rights. One the other hand, international law has often been conceived of as a system in which the only legitimate actors are states. In turn, only states can be bound by the fundamental rights obligations in international treaties. To address this tension, two models have been proposed. The first is an "Indirect duty" approach, whereby the state remains the primary duty-bearer and must itself "create" the …