International Trade Law Commons^™

Tracing The Truth: The Case For The United States To Adopt Eu-Style Supply Chain Transparency In Global High-Risk Industries, Daniel Assor

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Have you ever looked in your closet and wondered where your clothing came from? Or stared into the black mirror of your phone and questioned how it was made? Certainly, you know where you bought it, but are you sure of where it was before then? Unless you sew your own clothes or communicate by carrier pigeon, these questions may not have crossed your mind. However, I urge everyone to look around their home—you will find objects with questionable origins. This shift has brought increased focus to supply chains, elevating transparency as a critical element of corporate environmental, social, and …

Framing The Dialogue By Revisiting Fundamental Principles For Indirect Copyright Liability In China: History, Economics And Tort Law Analysis, Xiao Ma

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

The issue of indirect copyright liability has been debated for many years, particularly with the rise of technological advancements like cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI). China has frequently revised its laws and regulations to address copyright–related cases, often drawing from the experience of the common law system. However, this has sparked stakeholder disagreement on implementing filtering obligations for online services, raising the duty of care for online intermediaries, and whether safe harbor rules are still relevant.

This Article argues that the current regime of digital copyright liability rests on three pillars: historical, economic, and tort law theories. The author …

Trips, World Trade, Social Progress, And The Public Interest, Hannibal Travis

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement arrived in the 1990s amidst great fanfare for a suite of comprehensive reforms to a trading system that had failed the world time and again. It bore a title that sounded less like a pact on outsourcing or multinational corporatism and more like a fair trade pledge for products of the mind and the personality. TRIPs was introduced as a pillar of the New World Order, a post-Cold War vision in which the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of the Chinese economy would augur an era of harmonious commerce. …

Human Capital Disclosure & Corporate Governance: The New Evidence, George S. Georgiev

Articles

This Article explores the evolution of human capital disclosure-firm-supplied information about various workforce-related matters-as a factor in contemporary corporate governance. Regulatory and nonregulatory developments from recent years have upended longstanding practices and generated extensive new evidence. Most notably, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a human capital management ("HCM") disclosure mandate in 2020, which, though long overdue, was criticized from the outset for its modest scope and lax design. In the meantime, courts have taken a renewed interest in board of directors' oversight responsibilities in a number of areas, including HCM, while labor's power has unexpectedly increased in some …

The Akwesasne Black Hole: America’S Hidden Border Crisis, Anthony Puntasecca

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Economic Security And The Separation Of Powers, Kathleen Claussen, Timothy Meyer

Articles

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power "[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations," but today the exercise of the foreign commerce power resides primarily with the executive branch. That transfer of control is partly the result of significant delegations of responsibility for managing foreign commerce from Congress to the executive. It is also, however, the result of the securitization of foreign commerce. The executive branch asserts that foreign commerce issues fall under its constitutional powers over foreign affairs, and, thus, that it enjoys authority over foreign commerce that exceeds the scope of congressional delegations.

This Article makes three contributions. First, …

Trade Law Policing On The Factory Floor: Next Generation Agreements And Their Corporate Accountability Tools, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

Trade policymakers' increased attention to sustainability has prompted the development of trade tools focused on corporate accountability within international trade agreements. As evidenced by the creation and use of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement's Rapid Response Labor Mechanism, this institutional shift has potent implications for labour rights and environmental protections. This article, which transcribes a lecture delivered at the Lauterpacht Centre in October 2023, scrutinises the turn toward supply-chain policing within international trade law and its institutional, legal, sociological, rhetorical and disciplinary effects.

Puerto Rico: The Island Of Infringement? An Analysis Of The Intersectionality Of Eleventh Amendment Sovereign Immunity And Federal False Endorsement Claims, Robert Hilton

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This Note delves into the complex legal landscape of Puerto Rico’s application of sovereign immunity in the context of federal false endorsement claims, focusing particularly on the recent case involving the unauthorized use of Hall of Fame baseball player Roberto Clemente’s name and likeness. It critically examines the intersectionality of Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity with the Lanham Act’s Section 43(a), highlighting the challenges faced in enforcing intellectual property rights within unincorporated territories of the United States.

The analysis begins by exploring the historical basis of sovereign immunity and its evolution from common law to the intricacies of the Eleventh Amendment. …

Attributing Ai Authorship: Towards A System Of Icons For Legal And Ethical Disclosure, Joseph J. Avery, Patricia S. Abril, Alissa Del Riego

Articles

Over the past year, the pervasive role of large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence (Al) in text generation has precipitated concerns about ethical usage, authorship, and transparent attribution. This has been true in legal practice, academia, and the corporate world, as well as in countless other arenas. In this Article, we identify the gap that has opened between those demanding proper disclosure (we should know when and to what extent Al is an author) and those struggling to respond to these demands. Part of the problem is that there is no system in place, no lingua franca, no set …

Cuban Protests In 2021: An Opportunity To Implement Alternatives To Sanctions, Barbara Jimenez

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

The relationship between the United States and Cuba can be described as anything but simple. In fact, it is the intricacy of the relationship that inspired this Note. A key point in the complex relationship between the United States and Cuba was the United States’ decision to impose the embargo in 1962. Since 1962, Cuba’s relationship with the United States, and its allies, changed entirely. While the embargo poses an economic sanction, the United States, throughout the years, has placed sanctions on Cuban officials as a result of human rights violations in Cuba. Broadly, sanctions target the officials and freeze …

Is There Force In Force Majeure After Covid-19 Or In The Freedom To Negotiate Risk?, Sara Lazarevic

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This note explores the impact COVID–19 has had on contracting parties who have attempted to implicate force majeure provisions. An inquiry of recent cases reveals varying degrees of success and tension when parties turn towards force majeure text. This Note analyzes common law alternatives, discusses the implication of force majeure clauses as applied under Mexican and American law, highlights the implications that have played out in recent court decisions, and discusses post–pandemic implications that could affect how parties conduct cross–border transactions in the future.

Mitigating Zoonotic Disease Threats To Prevent Future Pandemics: A Critical Analysis Of Policy Favoring The Closures Of Wildlife Markets In Latin America, Melany J. Danielson

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

The Preventing Future Pandemics Act was introduced to mitigate zoonotic disease threats around the world by focusing policy efforts on the closure of wildlife markets that gave rise to COVID–19. This Note challenges the efficacy of wildlife market closure policy by considering cultural, socioeconomic, and legal factors for the existence of wildlife market within megadiverse countries in Latin America. Based on scientific research on the animal-to-human interface and zoonotic disease transmission, this Note suggests effective policy should incorporate a targeted species ban for reservoir species, improved sanitary measures and disease surveillance, and wildlife trafficking prevention. Ultimately, this Note calls for …

The Next 100 Years Of International Intellectual Property: Integrating Human Rights And Corporate Social Responsibility, J. Janewa Osei-Tutu

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Improvised Implementation Of Executive Agreements, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

Implementation is at the core of lawmaking in our divided government. A rich literature covers the waterfront with respect to agencies' implementation of legislative mandates, and another equally robust line of scholarship considers Congress's implementation of treaties. Missing from those discussions, however, is another area of implementation central to U. S. foreign relations: the implementation of transnational regulatory agreements.

This Article examines how federal agencies have harnessed far-reaching discretion from Congress on whether and how to implement thousands of international agreements. Agencies regularly implement agreements by relying on a self-developed menu of options, much like they do in the domestic …

If The Government Says So, It Must Be Right: An Analysis On The Impact Of Government Issued Force Majeure Certificates, Verónica Orantes

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

In March 2020, the world came to a halt with the beginning of the Covid–19 pandemic. The pandemic’s worldwide im-pact resulted in endless business transactions becoming im-possible or impracticable to perform. The China Council for the Promotion of International Trade issued force majeure certificates for its national business parties to excuse their performance under cross–border transactions. This note explores how the excuses for the performance of a contract work under Common Law and Civil Law systems and how each system would react to the parties invoking force majeure under a force majeure certificate issued by a government agency.

Trade Transparency: A Call For Surfacing Unseen Deals, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

For many years, the executive branch has concluded foreign commercial agreements with trading partners pursuant to delegated authority from Congress. The deals govern the contours of a wide range of U.S. inbound and outbound trade: from food safety rules for imported products to procedures and specifications of exported goods, to name two. The problem is that often no one-apart from the executive branch negotiators- knows what these deals contain. A lack of transparency rules has inhibited the publication of and reporting to Congress of these unseen deals. Dozens if not hundreds of foreign commercial deals are unseen in two ways: …

Trade's Mini-Deals, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

The modern consensus is that U.S. trade law is made through statute and through large congressional-executive agreements, both of which maintain Congress' constitutional primacy over the regulation of foreign commerce. Contrary to this understanding, however, short, targeted agreements negotiated by the U.S. executive with foreign trading partners - recently referred to as "mini-deals" - have become a fixture of the trade law landscape over the last three decades in staggering number. More than 1,200 such agreements govern the movement of goods and services in and out of the United States from and to 130 countries. Such deals are not only …

Trade Administration, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

At the core of public debates about trade policy making in the United States and the so-called "trade war" is a controversy over who should be responsible for making U.S. trade law: Congress or the President. What these important conversations miss is that underlying much of our trade policy in recent decades is a widespread executive-branch lawmaking apparatus with monitoring, rulemaking, adjudicative, and enforcement features that operates in considerable shadow. Executive branch agencies are now the primary actors in trade lawmaking. This Article excavates that critical underbelly: what I call our "trade administrative state." It maps the trade administrative state's …

The Paris Agreement Compliance Mechanism: Beyond Cop 26, Jessica Owley, Imad Antoined Ibrahim, Sandrine Maljean-Dubois

Articles

Without an international tribunal or tools like trade sanctions, there is little to coerce or encourage adherence with environmental treaties. The Paris Agreement, the governing global agreement to address climate change, relies on voluntary global cooperation. Countries determine their own commitments by setting nationally determined contributions of greenhouse gases emissions. The main mandatory elements of the agreement are reporting requirements. The success of the agreement turns on whether countries comply with these requirements. Article 15 of the Paris Agreement establishes a Compliance Committee and sets forth the mechanisms to ensure and facilitate compliance with the agreement. Yet, as with the …

Modernizing The Fair And Equitable Treatment Standards In The Energy Charter Treaty, Sydney Thurman-Baldwin

University of Miami Business Law Review

As oil and gas continue to be hot commodities for national economies, the number of international arbitrations in the energy sector has continued to rise in recent years. As the utilization of International Arbitration continues to rise in Energy disputes, so does the invocation of The Energy Charter Treaty (“ECT”). The ECT promotes inter-governmental cooperation with contracting parties in the energy sector through its provisions on investment protection, provisions on trade, transit of energy, energy efficiency, environmental protection and dispute resolution. These provisions are considered to be the cornerstone of the treaty, fostering a ‘level playing field’ for foreign investments …

Interpretation Of Article V Of The New York Convention In The Eleventh Circuit: Industrial Risk Insurers, Juan C. Garcia, Ivan Bracho Gonzalez

University of Miami Law Review

The widespread use and growing preference for international arbitration over cross-border litigation is primarily due to the existence of a clear and straightforward regime for the enforcement of arbitration agreements and awards. Even though this was not always the case, through the appearance of the New York Convention and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”) Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration, the treatment and acceptance of international arbitration in different legal regimes has undergone a harmonization process which has served to develop consistency. That harmonization process, however, has not been completed. Several jurisdictions, even within their own …

One Nation Under Trump: More Power To Him?, Jessica Hernandez

University of Miami Business Law Review

This note examines the following question: to what extent has the Trump administration heralded an expansion of presidential trade powers with respect to Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962? It proceeds by first providing an overview of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. It then looks at the Section 232 investigations which (a) preceded Trump’s assumption of office and (b) resulted in presidential trade action. After reviewing the aforementioned investigations, this note examines the Section 232 investigations initiated under the Trump administration. Attention is paid to how the Trump administration has defined ‘national security’ more broadly. The …

Dismantling The Wto: The United States’ Battle Against World Trade, Aaron Seals

University of Miami Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Untouchable Executive Authority: Trump And The Section 232 Tariffs On Steel And Aluminum, Arim Jenny Kim

University of Miami Business Law Review

In 2018, President Trump championed his way through the imposition of the Section 232 Tariffs—a heavy tax on various imports, including steel and aluminum—by broadcasting a supposedly-imminent threat to the U.S. national security. This plea, however, has been criticized as a veil for President Trump’s economic protectionism policy. Meanwhile, others have questioned the constitutionality of the statute creating the President’s authority to impose these tariffs in the first place. This Comment explores the issues arising from President Trump’s Section 232 Tariffs on steel and aluminum: (1) the validity and justiciability of President Trump’s actions under Section 232 of the Trade …

How Hard Can This Be? The Dearth Of U.S. Tax Treaties With Latin America, Patricia A. Brown

University of Miami Law Review

The United States has fewer tax treaties with countries in Latin America and the Caribbean than the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and even China have with such countries. After first describing ways in which tax treaties reduce barriers to cross-border trade and investment, this Article considers in turn various possible explanations for this situation. It examines, and rejects, the hypothesis that Latin American countries are reluctant to enter into tax treaties in general. It then considers, and rejects, the possibility that Latin American countries are opposed to in-creased trade and investment from the United States in particular. It then …

Privacy Protection(Ism): The Latest Wave Of Trade Constraints On Regulatory Autonomy, Svetlana Yakovleva

University of Miami Law Review

Countries spend billions of dollars each year to strengthen their discursive power to shape international policy debates. They do so because in public policy conversations labels and narratives matter enormously. The “digital protectionism” label has been used in the last decade as a tool to gain the policy upper hand in digital trade policy debates about cross-border flows of personal and other data. Using the Foucauldian framework of discourse analysis, this Article brings a unique perspective on this topic. The Article makes two central arguments. First, the Article argues that the term “protectionism” is not endowed with an inherent meaning …

Our Trade Law System, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

No abstract provided.

The International Claims Trade, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

Investments are mobile in the twenty-first century international economy. They are seldom held for their duration by a single owner from a single country. They change hands and they do so for a variety of reasons, often in the course of a dispute. But the scholarship addressing what happens when international investments and legal claims against sovereigns regarding those investments change hands appears only at the margins. The practice of buying and selling claims or claims trading is well known and institutionalized in some areas of domestic litigation. For cross-border investment disputes against sovereigns, however, many of the cases discussing …

Trade's Security Exceptionalism, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

At the core of U.S. trade law is an under-studied structural dichotomy. On the one hand, well-established statutory authorities enable the President to eliminate trade barriers through negotiations with U.S. trading partners. On the other hand, different, lesser-known authorities allow the President to erect trade barriers on an exceptional basis where necessary for U.S. economic security. Rather than thinking of free trade as a source of or tool for economic security as political theorists long have, our law codifies these authorities as though they are in contrast to one another-allowing departures from the free trade norm when security so demands. …

The Casualty Of Investor Protection In Times Of Economic Crisis, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

No abstract provided.