Transnational Law Commons^™

Nigeria And Mali: The Case For Repatriation And Protection Of Cultural Heritage In Post-Colonial Africa, Elizabeth A. Klesmith

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

Writing in early 2013, Elizabeth A. Klesmith explores the challenges of African nations in protecting their cultural heritage in the post-colonization era. She identifies two major challenges to the preservation of African cultural heritage: the multi-billion dollar global trade in illicit heritage and, in certain parts of Africa, the threat of destruction of cultural treasures during bouts of sectarian violence. Klesmith discusses these challenges utilizing case studies concerning the cultural treasures of Nigeria and Mali. In the case of Nigeria, the country is striving to reacquire artifacts looted from the Benin Kingdom in the late nineteenth century and recently purchased …

Managing The Public Trust: How To Make Natural Resource Funds Work For Citizens, Andrew Bauer, Perrine Toledano, Malan Rietveld

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Given their collective size – approximately $3.5 trillion in assets as of end-2013 and growing – and concerns about the motivations of their government owners, much has been written on natural resource funds (NRFs), their investments and global influence. However their impacts on governance and public financial accountability at home have received far less attention.

On the one hand, these funds can be used to serve the public interest, for example by covering budget deficits when resource revenues decline, saving for future generations, or helping to mitigate Dutch Disease through fiscal sterilization. On the other hand, they can undermine public …

Originalism At Home And Abroad, Yvonne Tew

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Originalism is typically thought to be a uniquely American preoccupation. This Article challenges the conventional view that originalism enjoys little support outside the United States by showing that the story of originalism-both at home and abroad-is more nuanced than has been appreciated. This Article examines how originalism has developed in two unexplored contexts-Malaysia and Singapore-to show that originalism not only thrives outside the United States but that it takes on distinct variations reflecting the cultural, historical, and political conditions of individual nations. The Article argues that whether originalism thrives, and the form that it takes, is context driven and culturally …

Strategic Delegation, Discretion, And Deference: Explaining The Comparative Law Of Administrative Review, Jud Mathews, Nuno M. Garoupa

Faculty Scholarship

This paper offers a theory to explain cross-national variation in administrative law doctrines and practices. Administrative law regimes vary along three primary dimensions: the scope of delegation to agencies, agencies’ exercise of discretion, and judicial practices of deference to agencies. Working with a principal-agent framework, we show how cross-national differences in institutions’ capacities and the environments they face encourage the adoption of divergent strategies that lead to a variety of distinct, stable, equilibrium outcomes. We apply our model to explain patterns of administrative law in the United States, Germany, France, and Commonwealth jurisdictions.

In Memoriam: Professor Harold G. Maier, Journal Editor

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Professor Harold Maier founded the student-edited Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law in 1967 and served as its faculty adviser until his retirement in 2005. He was appointed the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Professor of Law in 1988. He was a co-author of Public International Law in a Nutshell (with Thomas Buergenthal, West Publishing) and dozens of journal articles and book chapters, some written in German, which he spoke fluently. Hired in 1965 to develop Vanderbilt's international law program, Maier sought to establish a program to train students interested in an international legal practice and to enable scholarship in international legal …

Anarchy, Order, And Trade: A Structuralist Account Of Why A Global Commercial Legal Order Is Emerging, Bryan H. Druzin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

While still fragmented, the world is witnessing the emergence of a global commercial legal order independent of any one national legal system. This process is unfolding both on the macrolevel of state actors as well as on the microlevel of private individuals and organizations. On the macrolevel, the sources of this legal order are complex international agreements; on the microlevel, private contracts employing commercial customary practices and arbitration are driving this process forward. Yet there is no comparable evolution occurring (in any substantial sense) in noncommercial areas of law such as criminal, tort, or family law. There is an overall …

Foreign Direct Investment In The United States And Canada: Fractured Neoliberalism And The Regulatory Imperative, Gil Lan

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Although both Canada and the United States review foreign investment for national security concerns, Canada also requires that the investment be of "net benefit" to Canada. Recent investments by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have prompted the suggestion that the United States should also adopt a net benefit or economic test. This Article argues that the United States should not adopt the Canadian approach. The Canadian approach attempts to screen out foreign public entities and requires that they act in a "commercial" manner. This approach is based on two assumptions. First, it assumes that one can segregate …

Toward Greater Guidance: Reforming The Definitions Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Matthew W. Muma

Michigan Law Review

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 is the cornerstone of the United States’ efforts to combat the involvement of U.S. companies and individuals in corruption abroad. Enforced by both the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the Act targets companies and individuals that pay bribes to “foreign officials,” a nebulous category of persons that includes everyone from foreign cabinet members to janitors at companies only partially owned by a foreign state. After only sporadic enforcement in the early years of the Act’s existence, the SEC and DOJ now bring many cases annually. This increased …

Transnational Business Governance Interactions: Conceptualization And Framework For Analysis, Burkard Eberlein, Kenneth W. Abbott, Julia Black, Errol Meidinger, Stepan Wood

All Faculty Publications

This article demonstrates the value of studying interactions in transnational business governance (TBG) and proposes an analytical framework for that purpose. The number of TBG schemes involving non-state authority to govern business conduct across borders has vastly expanded in a wide range of issue areas. As TBG initiatives proliferate, they increasingly interact with one another, and with state-based and other normative regimes. The key challenge is to understand the implications of TBG interactions for regulatory capacity and performance – the most fruitful initial focus – and ultimately for the impacts of regulation on social and environmental problems. To gain purchase …

A Side Of Justice Rarely Seen: Professional Perspectives Toward Youth Justice And Sentencing Procedures In The Exploratory Context Of Canada And Russia, Serge Lokshin M.A.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis contributes to the growing body of literature on comparative youth justice and policy. By analyzing dilemmas faced by youth in justice systems from the perspective of Canada and Russia, the study argues that professional outlooks have a considerable significance for understanding the legal system and its function, and play an important role in shaping judicial administration concerning juveniles. An investigation into professional perspectives on youth justice is used to formulate an understanding of the issues for young people within the legal systems of the respective regions, the sentencing procedures, and the social and procedural contentions facing youth on …

Determining Extraterritoriality, Franklin A. Gevurtz

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

This Article addresses an underexplored but critical aspect of the presumption against extraterritoriality. The presumption against extraterritoriality-which the United States Supreme Court has increasingly invoked in recent years-calls for courts to presume that Congress does not intend U.S. statutes to govern events outside the United States. The most difficult issue presented by the presumption arises when relevant events occur both inside and outside the United States, as in the classic example, if a shooter on one side of the border kills a victim on the other, or if, as in the leading case, false statements originating inside the United States …

Who's In Charge Of Global Finance?, Michael S. Barr

Articles

The global financial crisis caused widespread harm not just to the financial system, but also to millions of households and businesses and to the global economy. The crisis revealed substantive, fundamental weaknesses in global financial regulation and raised serious questions about whether national regulators and the international financial regulatory system could ever be up to the task of overseeing global finance. This Article analyzes post-crisis reforms with two questions in mind: First, how can we build an effective international financial architecture with more than one architect? Second, can we build a system that is legitimate and accountable? The Article suggests …

Human Rights After Kiobel: Choice Of Law And The Rise Of Transnational Tort Litigation, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

The Supreme Court in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. held that the presumption against extraterritoriality applied to the Alien Tort Statute. As such, international human rights litigation as currently practiced in the United States is dead. The demise of the ATS will signal the rise of transnational tort litigation. Virtually every complaint pleading a human rights violation could allege a traditional domestic or foreign tort violation. With transnational tort claims, there is no presumption against extraterritoriality. Instead, courts apply state or foreign tort laws based on traditional choice-of-law principles.

The purpose of this Article is to outline the future …