International Law Commons^™

Penalty Clauses And The Cisg, Jack Graves

Scholarly Works

Commercial agreements often provide for “fixed sums” payable upon a specified breach. Such agreements are generally enforced in civil law jurisdictions. In contrast, the common law distinguishes between “liquidated damages” and “penalty” clauses, enforcing the former, while invalidating the latter as a penalty. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) does not directly address the payment of “fixed sums” as damages, and the validity of “penalty” clauses has, traditionally, been relegated to otherwise applicable domestic national law under CISG Article 4. This traditional orthodoxy has recently been challenged—suggesting that the fate of a penalty clause …

Penalty Clauses And The Cisg, Jack Graves

Scholarly Works

Commercial agreements often provide for “fixed sums” payable upon a specified breach. Such agreements are generally enforced in civil law jurisdictions. In contrast, the common law distinguishes between “liquidated damages” and “penalty” clauses, enforcing the former, while invalidating the latter as a penalty. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) does not directly address the payment of “fixed sums” as damages, and the validity of “penalty” clauses has, traditionally, been relegated to otherwise applicable domestic national law under CISG Article 4. This traditional orthodoxy has recently been challenged—suggesting that the fate of a penalty clause …

The End Of The Beginning - A Comprehensive Look At The U.N.'S Business And Human Rights Agenda From A Bystander Perspective, Jena Martin

Faculty Articles

With the endorsement of the Guiding Principles regarding the issue of business and human rights, an important chapter has come to a close. Beginning with the then U.N. Secretary-General's "global compact" speech in 1999, the international legal framework for business and human rights has undergone tremendous change and progress. Yet, for all these developments, there has been no exhaustive examination in the legal academy of all of these events; certainly, there is no one piece that discusses or analyzes all the major instruments that have been proposed and endorsed by the U.N. on the subject of business and its relationship …

The Consequences Of A "War" Paradigm For Counterterrorism: What Impact On Basic Rights And Values?, Laurie R. Blank

Georgia Law Review

Policy makers have used the rhetoric of "war"
throughout the past century to describe a major
governmental or societal effort to combat an evil that
threatens society, national security or other communal

good. It is both a rhetorical tool and a resource
mobilization, and above all a coalescing of authority to
meet the challenge, whether poverty, drugs or-most
recently-terrorism. Soon after 9/11 made al Qaeda a
household word, the Bush Administration characterized
U.S. efforts to defeat al Qaeda as the "War on Terror."
Here, however, the terminology of "war" goes far beyond
rhetoric, resource re-allocation and centralizing of
authority. When …

The Role Of The World Court Today, Joan E. Donoghue

Georgia Law Review

The International Court of Justice (ICJ, also known as the
World Court) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations
(UN). I have served as a member of the Court for the past two
years. During that time, I have had the opportunity to speak
about the Court and about international law to a variety of
audiences throughout the United States. It is a particular
privilege to deliver the Sibley Lecture here at the University of
Georgia School of Law, an institution that is known for its
commitment to the study of international law and international
relations.
The ICJ …

Supranational Diversity: Why Federal Courts Should Have Diversity Jurisdiction Over Cases Involving Supranational Organizations Like The European Union, John T. Dixon

Georgia Law Review

The federal diversity statute grants alienage jurisdiction
to "foreign citizens" and "foreign statutes," allowing them

to bring state-law claims against U.S. citizens in federal
'court. When the European Community (EC), an
intergovernmental organization of European states, sued
an American corporation for state-law violations, for the
first time a federal court had to determine whether the EC
qualified as a foreign state. The EC argued that it was
essentially a foreign state for the purposes of alienage
jurisdiction. Relying on the definition of foreign state in
the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA),
which the diversity statute references, the court …

Libya: A Multilateral Constitutional Moment?, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

The Libya intervention of 2011 marked the first time that the UN Security Council invoked the “responsibility to protect” principle (RtoP) to authorize use of force by UN member states. In this comment the author argues that the Security Council’s invocation of RtoP in the midst of the Libyan crisis significantly deepens the broader, ongoing transformation in the international law system’s approach to sovereignty and civilian protection. This transformation away from the traditional Westphalian notion of sovereignty has been unfolding for decades, but the Libyan case represents a further normative shift from sovereignty as a right to sovereignty as a …

The Legal Dilemma Of Guantanamo Detainees From Bush To Obama [Updated], Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

The stage for the Guantanamo detainees’ commission proceedings was set by the interplay between the Executive’s detention powers and the Judiciary’s habeas powers. The Bush administration turned to Congress to provide less than what was required by the court, instead of the minimum deemed necessary to comply with each decision, or to explore another legal argument for not complying. This article examines how the law for the Guantanamo detainees has been shaped by the US courts and by Congress. The article begins by observing the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court for compliance with the constitutional and humanitarian law requirements, …

Reclaiming Global Environmental Leadership: Why The United States Should Ratify Ten Pending Environmental Treaties, Noah M. Sachs

Law Faculty Publications

For more than a century, the United States has taken the lead in organizing international responses to international environmental problems. The long list of environmental agreements spearheaded by the United States extends from early treaties with Canada and Mexico on boundary waters and migratory birds to global agreements restricting trade in endangered species and protecting against ozone depletion.

In the last two decades, however, U.S. environmental leadership has faltered. The best known example is the lack of an effective response to climate change, underscored by the U.S. decision not to join the Kyoto Protocol. But that is not the only …

A Broken Windows Theory Of International Corruption, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

The Article re-conceptualizes corruption through the lens of the broken windows theory of community policing, focusing on the root consequences of corruption as well as its secondary effects.

Part II of the Article posits that corruption is a broken window that signals the breakdown of community controls necessary for the maintenance of social order. A government that abuses its power for private gain is a government that cannot be trusted to pursue the general welfare. Empirical evidence finds ample support for this claim, confirming that corruption negatively alters the public’s perception of government and society.

Part III of the Article …

Inclusionary Housing On A Global Basis, James J. Kelly Jr.

Journal Articles

This is a book review of Inclusionary Housing in International Perspective: Affordable Housing, Social Inclusion, and Land Value Recapture (2010, Nico Calavita and Alan Mallach, eds.). The book offers a comparative look at land-use based approaches to the creation of affordable housing in a broad range of developed countries. A little less than a sixth of the book is dedicated to the U.S., with special attention given to the development on inclusionary programs in California and New Jersey. The editors then devote a chapter each to Canada, England, Ireland, France, Spain and Italy. The penultimate chapter looks at inclusionary practices …

Cyber Security Without Cyber War, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

Which government agency should have primary responsibility for the Internet? The USA seems to have decided this question in favour of the military—the US military today has the largest concentration of expertise and legal authority with respect to cyberspace. Those in the legal community who support this development are divided as to the appropriate legal rules to guide the military in its oversight of the Internet. Specialists on the international law on the use of force argue that with analogy and interpretation, current international law can be applied in a way that allows great freedom without sending the message that …

The Message And Means Of The Modern Terrorism Prosecution, Wadie E. Said

Publications

This Article, written in conjunction with Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems' 2011 Symposium on Ten Years After 9/11: Rethinking Counterterrorism, stemmed from a panel that examined "how the United States and other Western countries receive Islamic culture in their societies and how they export their Western cultures to the Islamic world, in each case to assess the degree to which their cross-cultural behaviors mitigate or worsen anti-Western terrorism from the Middle East and Central/South Asia and to recommend solutions if needed."' This contribution focuses on the criminal terrorism prosecution in the United States, and takes up the panel's theme by …

Different Names For The Same Thing: Domestic Homicides And Dowry Deaths In The Western Media, Jennifer Parker

University of Colorado Law Review

Domestic violence is a global phenomenon that knows no geographic or cultural bounds. Whether they are shot, poisoned, stabbed, or burned, women across the world are dying at the hands of their male partners. Nevertheless, the Western media's portrayal of dowry deaths in India illustrates American society's failure to, or refusal to, connect dowry deaths to the parallel domestic homicides committed in the United States every day. From a postcolonial feminist standpoint, this Note argues that this disjunction is neither accidental nor inconsequential but rather reinforces the United States' hegemonic self-perception as a society in which women's liberation has been …

Introductory Remarks: International Energy Governance, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Sovereignty And The Promotion Of Peace In Non-International Armed Conflict, Anna Spain

Publications

No abstract provided.

Targeting Co-Belligerents, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

One of the central controversies of the targeted killing debate is the question of who can be targeted for a summary killing. The following chapter employs a novel normative framework: how to link an individual terrorist with a non-state group that threatens a nation-state. Six linking principles are catalogued and analyzed, including direct participation, co-belligerency, membership, control, complicity and conspiracy. The analysis produces counter-intuitive results, especially for civil libertarians who usually eschew status principles in favor of conduct principles. The concept of membership, a status concept central to international humanitarian law, is ideally suited to situations, like targeted killings, that …

The Case Against An International Cyber Warfare Convention, Lawrence L. Muir Jr.

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Secret's Out: The Ineffectiveness Of Current Trade Secret Law Structure And Protection For Global Health, Stephanie Zimmerman

Penn State International Law Review (1982 - 2011)

No abstract provided.

Concrete Control Of Constitutionality In Portugal: A Means Towards Effective Protection Of Fundamental Rights, Antonio Cortes, Teresa Violante

Penn State International Law Review (1982 - 2011)

No abstract provided.