International Trade Law Commons^™

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action: How American Unwillingness To Escalate Emboldens Mexico’S Populist Ambitions, David Montero

American University International Law Review

Part II of this Comment will explain the history of Mexico’s relationship with trade, as well as the finer details of the dispute resolution provisions of the USMCA that are of note. Part III will analyze two key violations of the USMCA by AMLO’s administration, contrasting the American response between the two and demonstrating the cycle of violations that has largely been created as a result of the failure to act. Part IV provides a simple recommendation to the U.S. administration for how to effectively halt its southern neighbor’s decline into unfettered populism that harms U.S. trade interests: employ the …

Balancing Predictability With Flexibility In Contract Negotiation And Drafting, Tahirih V. Lee

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Enforcing International Human Rights Law Against Corporations, Barnali Choudhury

All Papers

International human rights law is generally thought to apply directly to states, not to corporations since the latter is not a subject of international law. Some domestic courts are, however, enforcing these norms against corporations in domestic settings. Canadian courts have, for instance, recognized that corporations can be liable for breach of customary international law norms while UK courts have enforced international human rights norms indirectly against corporations relying on a combination of domestic corporate and tort law.

At the same time, some states are choosing to enforce international human rights norms against corporations using regulatory initiatives. These initiatives, known …

The Need For Corporate Guardrails In U.S. Industrial Policy, Lenore Palladino

Seattle University Law Review

U.S. politicians are actively “marketcrafting”: the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act collectively mark a new moment of robust industrial policy. However, these policies are necessarily layered on top of decades of shareholder primacy in corporate governance, in which corporate and financial leaders have prioritized using corporate profits to increase the wealth of shareholders. The Administration and Congress have an opportunity to use industrial policy to encourage a broader reorientation of U.S. businesses away from extractive shareholder primacy and toward innovation and productivity. This Article examines discrete opportunities within the …

Securities Regulation And Administrative Deference In The Roberts Court, Eric C. Chaffee

Seattle University Law Review

In A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, A.C. Pritchard and Robert B. Thompson write, “Securities law offers an illuminating window into the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence over the last century. The securities cases provide one of the most accessible illustrations of key transitions of American law.” A main reason for this is that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a bellwether among administrative agencies, and as a result, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court is a history of administrative law in the Supreme Court of the United States as well.

Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Starting in the 1930s with the earliest version of the proxy rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gradually increased the proportion of “instructed” votes on the shareholder’s proxy card until, for the first time in 2022, it required a fully instructed proxy card. This evolution effectively shifted the exercise of the shareholder’s vote from the shareholders’ meeting to the vote delegation that occurs when the share-holder fills out the proxy card. The point in the electoral process when the binding voting choice is communicated is now the execution of the proxy card (assuming the shareholder completes the card …

Capitalism Stakeholderism, Christina Parajon Skinner

Seattle University Law Review

Today’s corporate governance debates are replete with discussion of how best to operationalize so-called stakeholder capitalism—that is, a version of capitalism that considers the interests of employees, communities, suppliers, and the environment alongside (if not before) a company’s shareholders. So much focus has been dedicated to the question of capitalism’s reform that few have questioned a key underlying premise of stakeholder capitalism: that is, that competitive capitalism does not serve these various constituencies and groups. This Essay presents a different view and argues that capitalism is, in fact, the ultimate form of stakeholderism. As such, the Essay urges that the …

The Esg Information System, Stavros Gadinis, Amelia Miazad

Seattle University Law Review

The mounting focus on ESG has forced internal corporate decision-making into the spotlight. Investors are eager to support companies in innovative “green” technologies and scrutinize companies’ transition plans. Activists are targeting boards whose decisions appear too timid or insufficiently explained. Consumers and employees are incorporating companies sustainability credentials in their purchasing and employment decisions. These actors are asking companies for better information, higher quality reports, and granular data. In response, companies are producing lengthy sustainability reports, adopting ambitious purpose statements, and touting their sustainability credentials. Understandably, concerns about greenwashing and accountability abound, and policymakers are preparing for action.

In this …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Marijuana Insurgency: Federalism And Social Reframing In Policy Reform, Matthew P. Cavedon

Seattle University Law Review

After fifty years of federal prohibition, marijuana reform efforts have won political and legal success. These victories hold lessons for anyone seeking to resist federal law without being able to directly affect it.

Victory can come from reframing an issue. For marijuana reform, social reframing—not formal legal analysis or material factors—provides the best explanation for how advocates achieved change. Their unconventional political tactics, akin to those used by insurgents in wartime, undercut federal prohibition by winning hearts and minds.

This is an analysis of the sociology of legal change. It is also the story of how ordinary Americans retook personal …

What Is In Your Tampon? Increasing Transparency In Menstrual Products, Elianna Spitzer

Seattle University Law Review

The average person who menstruates will bleed for an average of five days, every twenty-four to thirty-eight days, over several decades and could use thousands of disposable menstrual products in their lifetime. Menstrual products line retail shelves. They can be found in homes, bags, and bodies—but until 2021, manufacturers were not required to disclose the ingredients used to make these products to consumers at all. In fact, they still are not federally required to disclose menstrual product ingredients on product packaging. Instead, in recent years, changes to menstrual product labels have largely been the result of state legislation. In 2019, …

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 …

The Eu-China Cai And The Uyghur Challenge In The Context Of China's Domestic Law Barriers To International Labor And Human Rights Standards, Ronald C. Brown

American University Business Law Review

While China engages in world commerce as a global player and is signatory to international labor and human rights standards, at the same time it uses treaty reservations and its own domestic laws to limit and undermine the full application of those standards. Concern from Western governments and global human rights groups regarding China’s longstanding treatment of the Uyghur people has resulted in a freeze in negotiations for the EU-China Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CAI). This was also a result of China’s failure to ratify or implement relevant United Nations (U.N.) covenants and International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions and placing reservations …

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

The Trade Origins Of Privacy Law, Anupam Chander

Indiana Law Journal

The desire for trade propelled the growth of data privacy law across the world. Countries with strong privacy laws sought to ensure that their citizens’ privacy would not be compromised when their data traveled to other countries. Even before this vaunted Brussels Effect pushed privacy law across the world through the enticement of trade with the European Union, Brussels had to erect privacy law within the Union itself. And as the Union itself expanded, privacy law was a critical condition for accession.

But this coupling of privacy and trade leaves a puzzle: how did the U.S. avoid a comprehensive privacy …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

Everybody Wants To Rule The World: Central Bank Digital Currencies In The Era Of Decoupling The World’S Two Largest Economies, James M. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

Some 130 central banks around the world are experimenting with various levels of a central bank digital currency (“CBDC”), a digitized form of a sovereign-backed, national currency that is a liability of that country’s central bank. Unlike fiat currency, CBDCs are trackable and potentially subject to interference and even freezing by government authorities. CBDCs will affect citizens’ control over commerce, payments, and savings, and impact their privacy rights. The Chinese government has piloted, refined, and rolled out its own CBDC called the Digital Currency/Electronic Payment initiative (“DC/EP”), also known as the digital yuan or e-CNY. The Chinese government is far …

How The International Investment Law Regime Undermines Access To Justice For Investment-Affected Stakeholders, Ladan Mehranvar

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

For over a decade now, the international investment law regime, which includes investment treaties and their central pillar, the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, has been facing sustained calls for reform. These have largely centered on the concerns regarding the high costs of ISDS, the restrictions placed by the investment treaty regime on the right—or duty—of states to regulate in the public interest, and the questionable benefits arising from these treaties in the first place. Several states have taken proactive measures: some have revised investment treaty standards to better protect their regulatory powers; others have introduced new approaches to investment …

Uncitral Working Group Iii: Contribution On The ‘Right To Regulate’ Provision, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, International Institute For Environment And Development, South Centre

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

"UNCITRAL Working Group III: Contribution on the ‘Right to Regulate’ Provision" is a joint submission to the Secretariat's request for comments on the procedural and cross-cutting issues. The commentary focuses on the states' right-to-regulate provision, proposed in the Draft provisions on procedural and cross-cutting issues, and proposes additional policy options aimed at preserving the states' sovereign right (and duty) to regulate.

Overcoming The Pragmatic Approach Of The United Nations Guiding Principles On Business And Human Rights In Relation To The Fossil Fuel Industry, Barnali Choudhury

Articles & Book Chapters

Business has been good for Big Oil. Last year, the five largest Western oil companies raked in over USD$200 billion in profits. Last year, the global carbon emissions from the fossil fuel industry also peaked. Companies produced over 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions during the year and global warming hit a new sustained high. Increasing temperatures also caused socio-economic impacts such as deaths, displacement of people, loss of employment and adverse impacts on food security.

While numerous studies have drawn links between the corporate activities of the fossil fuel industry and the devastating environmental and human rights impacts …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

The Trade Origins Of Privacy Law, Anupam Chander

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The desire for trade propelled the growth of data privacy law across the world. Countries with strong privacy laws sought to ensure that their citizens’ privacy would not be compromised when their data traveled to other countries. Even before this vaunted Brussels Effect pushed privacy law across the world through the enticement of trade with the European Union, Brussels had to erect privacy law within the Union itself. And as the Union itself expanded, privacy law was a critical condition for accession.

But this coupling of privacy and trade leaves a puzzle: how did the U.S. avoid a comprehensive privacy …

Beyond The Name And Nationality: Who Are The Claimants In Investment Arbitration?, Vera Korzun

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Current efforts to reform international investment law focus in large part on the impact of investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) on the regulatory power of the sovereign State. At the core of the reform debate is the ability of foreign investors, as claimants in investment treaty arbitrations, to challenge the laws and regulations of the host State as part of dispute resolution. Modern investment treaties seek to safeguard the State’s right to regulate, but also impose obligations on foreign investors and promote responsible business conduct. Yet, beyond the name and nationality as alleged in arbitration filings, very little is known about …

Addressing The Negative Externalities Of Trade: Flanking Policies And The Role Of Package Treaties, Gregory Shaffer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines the rationales for addressing sustainability and social inclusion in trade policy and the tradeoffs among imperfect institutional choices in doing so through “flanking policies.” It examines three types of negative spillovers or externalities implicated by trade: material, moral, and social/political. Part I defines terms and sets forth the argument. Part II typologizes the three categories of negative externalities and then highlights the challenges posed for flanking measures given the reciprocal nature of externalities. It respectively addresses environmental harms and labor and social inclusion concerns. Part III assesses different institutional choices for addressing negative externalities, dividing them between …

The Taylor Swift Effect And International Law, Katrin Kuhlmann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has come to an end, but the Taylor Swift Effect will remain a powerful force with influence well beyond even Swift herself. Often used to describe Swift’s economic impact through her fandom, it has become shorthand for the broader network effect that amplifies and extends the reach of her discography and cultural influence. As this article discusses, the Taylor Swift Effect has real implications for international relations and international law at a time when many nations are withdrawing from constructive international engagement, with devastating consequences in terms of global rights, liberties, and norms.

This article explores …

Corporations As International Economic Law Actors, Barnali Choudhury

All Papers

Actors in international law are presumed to be states. Yet in the international economic law arena, the corporation is one of the most prominent non-state actors. Indeed, in some instances, the corporation may even be more influential than the state in some arenas of international economic law. This short piece examines three instances of this influence. First, it looks at the role of corporations in law-making; second, it examines corporations’ role in monitoring and compliance; and, third, it explores corporations’ legal personality in international economic law. Finding corporations’ immense influence on law-making and monitoring and compliance, combined with a robust …

Good Faith As Mechanism For An Efficient Market, Victor Caminha Cavalcante

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

This article explores the role of the principle of good faith in enhancing commercial efficiency within Brazilian, Italian and U.S. legal systems. The principle, recognized under Brazilian Civil Law since the enactment of the 2002 Civil Code, is compared with its application under U.S. law, particularly through the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and Restatement (Second) of Contracts, and under Italian Civil Code. The study analyzes how good faith, as an objective legal standard, fosters contractual fairness, transparency, and predictability, thereby contributing to a more structured and efficient market. By examining case law, scholarly perspectives, and the interaction between traditional and …

The Consumer’S Choice To Boycott, Agnes Bresee

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of employees losing their jobs upon voicing their political opinions concerning Israel, Harvard and Columbia law students’ job offers being rescinded upon expressing support for Palestine, and the names and social media profiles of individuals who support Palestine being collected and listed on Canary Mission, such backlash may leave many Americans wondering what form of resistance to settler-colonialist apartheid is acceptable in the twenty-first century. Recently, the movement to collectively boycott brands like Starbucks, which sued its Worker’s Union for a tweet expressing support for Palestine; Disney, which donated money to Israel; and McDonald’s, where a location …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents