International Law Commons^™

The Supreme Court's Policy Favoring Arbitration And Its Limits, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

While the federal policy favoring arbitration is codified in the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), the strength of that policy depends on the treatment that arbitration receives in federal courts and in the United States Supreme Court in particular.

Courts in all jurisdictions play an important role in fashioning the treatment of arbitration agreements, arbitral proceedings and arbitral awards. However, the judicial role in this regard is especially pronounced in the United States, in view of the problematic state of legislation on the subject. The federal legislation on arbitration is 100 years old and has never been meaningfully amended. The …

Gendered Harms In Armed Conflict: International Legal Responses To The Gendered Effects Of The War In Sudan, Naima Dams

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis interrogates how international law conceptualizes, prosecutes, and ultimately limits the understanding of sexual violence in contexts of war and displacement. Drawing on feminist legal theory, postcolonial critique, and ethnographic fieldwork with Sudanese women displaced in Egypt, it questions the dominant legal framing of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) as episodic, exceptional, and individualized. Instead, it reveals sexual violence as structural, continuous, and embedded in the everyday realities of racialized, gendered, and colonial harm.

Through ethnographical narratives, the study exposes how survivors' experiences often exceed the legibility frameworks of humanitarian and legal institutions, which prioritize spectacular, forensic evidence over slow, …

Stitching Up Industry Issues: Arbitration Can Offer Customized Solutions To Fashion Intellectual Property Disputes, Catherine Meng

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This comment proposes alternative dispute resolution (ADR), specifically arbitration, as a more effective mechanism for resolving fashion copyright disputes. The fashion industry has historically received limited protection for designs—primarily trademark and patent law—resulting in widespread copying and difficulty enforcing claims. In the 2017 case Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc., the Supreme Court added copyright to the patchwork of protections. However, that protection is available only for aesthetic elements, not functional ones. The difficulty in distinguishing these components, along with the challenges of enforcing claims across borders and between parties with unequal bargaining power, as in Hian v. Louis …

Sdilj V. 27-1 Masthead

San Diego International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Austrian Again Book Talk, Cardozo Law Institute In Holocaust And Human Rights (Clihhr)

2025–2026 Flyers

The Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights hosted a special book talk featuring author Anne Hand, discussing her memoir Austrian Again. In her book, Hand explores her journey to uncover her family’s hidden history during the Holocaust while pursuing Austrian citizenship, tracing her Austrian and Czechoslovakian roots through personal stories and historical records.

The program also featured Evelyn Konrad, Cardozo alumna and Holocaust survivor, who joined the conversation and shared her personal reflections. Moderated by Konrad, the event examined themes of identity, migration, heritage, and historical memory.

Only Americans Left Behind: Iran’S Illegal Use Of Hostages As Political Pawns To Advance Their Foreign Policy, Ava Namazi

San Diego International Law Journal

The Islamic Republic of Iran has emerged as one of the most prominent contemporary practitioners of hostage diplomacy—a strategy rooted in the 1979 Hostage Crisis and sustained through recurring detentions of foreign nationals on fabricated security charges. The government uses innocent foreign nationals as political pawns to coerce Western states, including the United States, to release frozen Iranian assets held abroad. This Comment situates Iran’s use of hostage diplomacy within its post-revolutionary foreign policy, examining how the collapse of the Pahlavi dynasty contributed to this tactic. Additionally, this Comment will analyze the current international legal frameworks governing hostage diplomacy and …

An International Human Rights-Based Approach To Reducing Maternal Mortality And Enhancing Safe Motherhood In Africa, John Mukum Mbaku

San Diego International Law Journal

In 2015, the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) noted that almost fifteen years after the global community had agreed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which provided an important framework for economic and human development, significant progress has been made in several areas. However, the UNGA explained that many developing countries have not been able to achieve the MDGs, especially those goals related to maternal and reproductive health. Although the global maternal mortality rate has declined significantly, only 50% of pregnant women in developing countries receive the recommended minimum of four antenatal care visits. Additionally, complications suffered during pregnancy and childbirth …

Seamless Security: Reforming Export Controls For A Stronger Allied Defense Industrial Base, Justin Belcher

San Diego International Law Journal

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s accelerating military modernization underscore the need for the United States and its allies to reinforce their defense industrial bases to deter and prevail in future conflicts. This paper examines the historical and strategic foundations driving the need for export control reform, identifies key U.S. export control laws governing defense coproduction and co-development, and analyzes how current regulations constrain allied industrial integration. It concludes by proposing solutions to streamline export control regulations to improve the strength and resilience of the modern defense industrial base.

Beyond The Cisg: Utilizing Unidroit Principles To Synchronize International Contract Law Beyond Sales Of Goods, Noor Albandar

San Diego International Law Journal

Modern advancements have made it easier than ever for individuals and businesses to enter into cross-border transactions. Contract law in the United States employs legal instruments such as the UCC to aid contracting parties, and international law consists of tools such as the CISG supporting cross-border contracts for the sale of goods. Such tools are important because international transactions for goods occur frequently. This Comment will examine the complexities that arise in the face of international contracts, discuss tools for uniform law that are currently utilized by various governing bodies, and propose further implementation of uniform international contract law. In …

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …