International Law Commons^™

Deliberation And Decision-Making Process In The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights: Do Individual Opinions Matter?, Ranieri L. Resende

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

The work is focused on the adjudicatory nature of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and investigates its model of deliberation, considering three basic schemes: per curiam, seriatim and hybrid. In order to identify an institutional pattern, the importance of individual opinions is analyzed through the quantitative performance of each category of judge (ad hoc and regular), as well as each type of adjudicative activity (judgments and advisory opinions). The quantitative data is also useful to better understand the explicit assimilation of separate opinions to the core reasoning of future cases. As a result, it has been possible to identify …

Does Customary International Tax Law Exist?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Customary international law is law that “results from a general and consistent practice of states followed by them from a sense of legal obligation.” “International agreements create law for states parties thereto and may lead to the creation of customary international law when such agreements are intended for adherence by states generally and are in fact widely accepted.” Does customary international law (CIL) exist in tax? There are over 3,000 bilateral tax treaties, and they are about 80% identical to each other, but do they create CIL that binds in the absence of a binding treaty, like for example the …

The Dialogic Aspect Of Soft Law In International Insolvency: Discord, Digression, And Development, John A. E. Pottow

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this study, I describe three important articles in the IRJ model law and discuss their development, drawing in part upon my experience as a delegate to UNCITRAL Working Group V. In doing so, I want to situate these developments within the broader discussions of international law and international relations theory regarding soft law. Doing so will both vindicate and puzzle some of the conventional understanding of how soft law instruments tend to function, although some of the conclusions must necessarily be conjectural at this stage.

The Use Of Soft Law In The Creation Of Legal Norms In International Commercial Law: How Successful Has It Been?, Henry Deeb Gabriel

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Article, I examine several interrelated points. After defining soft law in Part II, I briefly set out some of the assumed advantages soft law instruments may have over legislation and regulations in Part III. In Part IV, I examine why some soft law instruments in international commercial law have been successful in creating international legal norms. In this Part, I specifically examine the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts to show how one might gauge success by looking beyond the express purpose of the instrument. I also compare the UNIDROIT Principles of Commercial Contracts with the American Law …

The Policy Implications Of Third-Party Funding In Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Brooke Guven, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In this Working Paper, CCSI analyzes underexplored yet critical policy issues surrounding the use of third-party funding in ISDS. It considers the costs and benefits of the practice, asks whether it is desirable or undesirable that third-parties be permitted to invest in ISDS claims, and if so, under what circumstances and in order to achieve what objectives, and overviews policy responses, including a total or partial ban and various regulatory responses, that may be appropriate to manage identified impacts.

Primer: International Investment Treaties And Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

What Are International Investment Agreements (IIAs)?
IIAs are bilateral or multilateral treaties that commit state-parties to afford specific standards of conduct to foreign investors from the other state-parties. These treaties grant foreign investors certain benefits, including recourse to Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) to resolve disputes with host states. Over 3,300 agreements have been concluded worldwide, including NAFTA and the Comprehensive and Progressive TransPacific Partnership.

What is Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)?
IIAs allow foreign investors (individuals and companies) to allege treaty violations by suing states through ad hoc arbitration. Arbitration tribunals are composed of party-appointed (and party-paid) private lawyers. Tribunals …

Ccsi Submits Written Views To Us Department Of State Regarding Uncitral’S Working Group Iii, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In connection with the US Department of State’s Annual Advisory Committee on Private International law meeting in May 2019, CCSI submitted written views regarding UNCITRAL’s Working Group III on ISDS reform. CCSI’s comments highlighted specific areas of CCSI’s research as it relates to the US Government and its work within the Working Group. Specifically, US investment treaty negotiating objectives specify that covered foreign investors in the United States should not be accorded greater substantive rights than domestic investors. CCSI highlights the ways in which greater procedural rights afforded under investment treaties to foreign investors in practice result in greater substantive …

Indeterminacy In The Law Of Armed Conflict, Adil Ahmad Haque

International Law Studies

Controversy and confusion pervade the law of armed conflict. Its most basic rules may seem ambiguous, vague, incomplete, or inconsistent. The prevailing view of customary international law confronts serious problems, in principle and in practice, when applied to the customary law of armed conflict. Legal indeterminacy, in its different forms, might be reduced or resolved in light of the object and purpose of the law of armed conflict, or by taking into account other relevant rules of international law. Unfortunately, the purpose of the law of armed conflict is itself the subject of deep disagreement. So is the relationship between …

Global Standards For Securities Holding Infrastructures: A Soft Law/Fintech Model For Reform, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article outlines a “soft-law-to-hard-law” approach for the development and implementation of reforms to systems for the holding of publicly traded securities. It proposes the development of global standards for securities holding systems (“Global Standards”), to be led by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (the “IOSCO”). This approach contemplates that States would be encouraged and expected to implement the Global Standards by adopting “hard law” reforms through statutory and regulatory adjustments to their securities holding systems as well as modifications of the architecture of their securities holding systems. The successes of past IOSCO initiatives inspire this Article’s proposal, as …

Intersex, Hyperandrogenism, Female Athletes: A Legal Perspective On The Iaaf Doping Regulations And Where Hyperandrogenic Female Athletes Fit In, Tylyn Wells

Santa Clara Journal of International Law

Intersex, Hyperandrogenism, Female Athletes: A Legal Perspective on The IAAF Doping Regulations and Where Hyperandrogenic Female Athletes Fit In

The Criminalization Of Cyberbullying Among Children And Youth, Liat Franco, Khalid Ghanayim

Santa Clara Journal of International Law

The Criminalization of Cyberbullying Among Children and Youth

Spill-Over Reputation: Comparative Study Of India & The United States, Srividhya Ragavan

Faculty Scholarship

This paper compares India’s position with that of the US on the question of protection of well-known marks in the light of applicable international legal prescriptions. The discussion in this paper compares protection for famous foreign marks (as opposed to a famous mark). Famous foreign marks are those that have acquired fame in one country and hence, well-known in another country.

Between Politics And Morality: Hans Kelsen's Contributions To The Changing Notion Of International Criminal Responsibility, Jason Kropsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The pure theory of law analyzes the legal normative basis of jurisprudence. According to its author, Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), the study of law as a science can only arise once “alien elements” associated with sociology, politics, ethics and psychology are extracted from strict legal cognition. But what happens when the international sphere of law that possesses the special quality of holding state officials accountable for core international crimes requires intrusion by extra-legal sources? Does Kelsen’s structural edifice collapse? Or is it reconstituted? In examining how international criminal responsibility, a test case for Kelsen’s positive law claims derives its legitimacy, this …

“There’S Voices In The Night Trying To Be Heard”: The Potential Impact Of The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities On Domestic Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin, Naomi M. Weinstein

Brooklyn Law Review

This article carefully examines, through a therapeutic jurisprudence framework, the likely impact of the United States’ ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on U.S. society’s sanist attitudes towards persons with mental disabilities. Although the United Nations ratified the CRPD—the most significant historical development in the recognition of the human rights of persons with mental disabilities— in 2008, the United States has yet to ratify it. In this article, we consider whether the CRPD, if ratified, is likely to finally extinguish the toxic stench of sanism that permeates all levels of society. We …

Offshore Drilling: Combating Regulatory Uncertainty With Contract Law Protection, Jordan M. Steele

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Offshore drilling accounts for billions of dollars in tax revenue every year. It is a pillar of the energy industry and is crucial to the economy. A recent flurry of deregulation, accelerating with the arrival of the Trump administration, highlights the tremendous impact politics has upon the profitability of this sector. The Secretary of the Interior, under the direction of the President, wields the power to regulate and make determinations into where, when, and how private companies can drill offshore. These private companies have contracts with the government for the opportunity to produce and develop oil or gas on the …

The Asean Way Or No Way? A Closer Look At The Absence Of A Common Rule On Intellectual Property Exhaustion In Asean And The Impact On The Asean Market, Irene Calboli

Faculty Scholarship

The Symposium in which this essay is published features recent developments in the law of intellectual property (IP) in Asia. In this essay, I focus on the Association of South East-Asian Nations (ASEAN), a region that I have had the opportunity to visit extensively in the past several years. In particular, I analyze the enforcement of IP rights in the context of the application of the principle of IP exhaustion in individual ASEAN Members, and the relationship between this principle and free movement of goods within the ASEAN region. In the past, I have addressed the same topic with respect …

Businesspersons, Governments, And International Law, Halil Rahman Basaran

Louisiana Law Review

The article sets forth evidence to substantiate the dynamics and tensions among businessperson, governments and international law with particular focus on issues related to controlling the development of cryptocurrencies through taxation, regulation or even prohibition.

Casualties Of War? Refining The Civilian-Military Dichotomy In World War I, Eric Grube

Madison Historical Review

Throughout the First World War, newspapers around the world mocked the British state for its lavish spending on captured German officers kept at Donington Hall, a refurbished English estate. Why was this camp such a controversial space of perceived decadence? I argue that its comforts seemed to linger from an earlier era, one in which military men exuded genteel civility as integral to their supposedly heroic service. The British state essentially enabled such treatment, and the public decried this space for sustaining the anachronism of aristocratic privilege in the face of a globalized total war. However, the German inmates expected …

The Gdpr: It Came, We Saw, But Did It Conquer?, Leila Javanshir

Seattle University Law Review

On February 1, 2019, the Seattle University Law Review held its annual symposium at the Seattle University School of Law. Each year, the Law Review hosts its symposium on a topic that is timely and meaningful. This year, privacy and data security professionals from around the globe gathered to discuss the current and future effects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that was implemented on May 25, 2018. The articles and essays that follow this Foreword are the product of this year’s symposium.

Regulating The Gdpr: Perspectives From The United Kingdom, Hannah Mccausland

Seattle University Law Review

Hannah McCausland leads the international group at the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO’s International Engagement functions as the gateway to other data protection and privacy authorities on international matters. She’s involved in the work of the EU European Data Protection Board advising the commissioner and the deputy commissioner on international positioning of the ICO, and she has played a key role over the past six years in the ICO’s strategy on navigating the EU’s data protection framework. Hannah has also played a major role at the global level and advancing the practical tools that data protection and privacy …

Privacy, Freedom, And Technology—Or “How Did We Get Into This Mess?”, Alex Alben

Seattle University Law Review

Can we live in a free society without personal privacy? The question is worth pondering, not only in light of the ongoing debate about government surveillance of private communications, but also because new technologies continue to erode the boundaries of our personal space. This Article examines our loss of freedom in a variety of disparate contexts, all connected by the thread of erosion of personal privacy. In the scenarios explored here, privacy reducing activities vary from government surveillance, personal stalking conducted by individuals, and profiling by data-driven corporations, to political actors manipulating social media platforms. In each case, new technologies …

Confiding In Con Men: U.S. Privacy Law, The Gdpr, And Information Fiduciaries, Lindsey Barrett

Seattle University Law Review

In scope, ambition, and animating philosophy, U.S. privacy law and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation are almost diametric opposites. The GDPR’s ambitious individual rights, significant prohibitions, substantive enforcement regime, and broad applicability contrast vividly with a scattershot U.S. regime that generally prioritizes facilitating commerce over protecting individuals, and which has created perverse incentives for industry through anemic enforcement of the few meaningful limitations that do exist. A privacy law that characterizes data collectors as information fiduciaries could coalesce with the commercial focus of U.S. law, while emulating the GDPR’s laudable normative objectives and fortifying U.S. consumer privacy law with a …

General Data Protection Regulation (Gdpr): Prioritizing Resources, Jennifer Dumas

Seattle University Law Review

This Article will discuss and analyze the years of preparation for the GDPR and provide recommendations for dealing with the GDPR forevermore. It will assess whether the preparation and panic were worth it. In other words, was the time, expense, and distraction my peers and I expended and experienced over the past years proportionate to the requirements and impact of the GDPR? Further, was the high level of preparation and panic many legal departments in countless companies undertook and experienced appropriate now that we have had a chance to see the initial impact of the GDPR?

Privacy Statements Under The Gdpr, Mike Hintze

Seattle University Law Review

The need to include specific types of information in a privacy statement is a GDPR compliance obligation that does not get as much attention as some other GDPR requirements. Perhaps that is because privacy statements have been much maligned in recent years. They are too long and full of legalese. Nobody reads them. They are part of a notice and consent approach to privacy that puts an unrealistic burden on consumers to make informed choices. But despite these well-known criticisms, the GDPR doubles down on privacy statements. In fact, gauging by the roughly fourfold increase in privacy statement requirements compared …

Requiem For Cyberspace: The Effect Of The European General Privacy Regulation On The Global Internet, Steven Tapia

Seattle University Law Review

The dream of a perpetual, limitless, non-dimensional space is an idea that has transfixed clergy, philosophers, and poets for ages. Whether it is called “heaven,” “the afterlife,” “nirvana,” or another linguistic stand-in, the dream of a dimension beyond the bounds of time, space, and the laws of nature seems as universal as any concept ever. From its initial development in the 1970s (as a military, academic, and governmental experiment in creating a wholly alternative means of communication capable of surviving catastrophic failures of any parts of the communications conduits) until essentially now, the Internet seemed to be the closest incarnate …

Footprints: Privacy For Enterprises, Processors, And Custodians…Oh My!, Blair Witzel, Carrie Mount

Seattle University Law Review

Americans’ interest in privacy—as evidenced by increasing news coverage, online searches, and new legislation—has grown over the past decade. After the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), technologists and legal professionals have focused on primary collectors of data—known under various legal regimes as the “controller” or “custodian.” Thanks to advances in computing, many of these data collectors offload the processing of data to third parties providing data-related cloud services like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. In addition to the data they have already collected about the data subjects themselves, these companies now “hold” that data on behalf of …

A New Weight On The Scale: Strengthening International Human Rights Law By Relying On Treaties In Us Asylum Cases, Allison Hugi

Santa Clara Journal of International Law

A New Weight on the Scale: Strengthening International Human Rights Law By Relying on Treaties in US Asylum Cases

Gdpr Compliance—It Takes A Village, Susy Mendoza

Seattle University Law Review

When the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in May of 2018, many legal departments were confronted with the gravity of just how they were going to comply with such a wide-reaching law. If you have international customers (both direct to consumer or business to business), it is not hard to convince your general counsel that compliance with the GDPR is a must. You may even be able to get the chief technical officer (CTO) or chief operating officer (COO) onboard just by mentioning the steep fines—two to four percent of worldwide gross revenue. But how does the …

Talking Foreign Policy: Untangling The Yemen Crisis, Milena Sterio, Michael P. Scharf, Paul R. Williams, James Johnson, Laura Graham

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Talking Foreign Policy is a production of Case Western Reserve University and is produced in partnership with 90.3 FM WCPN ideastream. Questions and comments about the topics discussed on the show, or to suggest future topics, go to [email protected].

British Government Information Resources, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

Provides an overview of British Government information resources. Contents include basic British economic and political background and information from British Government websites including the Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Brexit related material produced by British government agencies such as the Department for Exiting the European Union,, the Ministry of Defence, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, the Home Office Visas and Immigration Section, the Office of National Statistics, Her Majesty's Treasury, the British Parliament including parliamentary committees and research agencies, the website of Member of Parliament (MP) Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative-North East Somerset), a webcast of House …