International Law Commons^™

The Rule 23(B)(3) Superiority Requirement And Transnational Class Actions: Excluding Foreign Class Members In Favor Of European Remedies, Michael P. Murtagh

UC Law SF International Law Review

This Article analyzes the way federal courts conduct their superiority inquiries on motions for class certification in transnational class actions. Opt-out class actions under Rule 23(b)(3) conflict with an important premise of legal systems around the world, namely, that one cannot be bound to a judgment unless one affirmatively participated in the lawsuit. Federal courts sometimes either decline to certify the class or exclude foreign class members from the class because of the risk that the courts of foreign countries will not enforce the class action judgment. This Article argues that the current approach inefficiently exposes the parties to costly …

Health, Human Rights, And Violence Against Women And Girls: Broadly Redefining Affirmative State Duties After Opuz V. Turkey, Cheryl Hanna

UC Law SF International Law Review

This Paper was initially presented at the Hastings International & Comparative Law Review symposium Heath as a Human Right: The Global Option. The symposium was held in memory of Professor Virginia Leary, a leader in international law. Professor Hanna takes this theme and applies it to global problem of violence against women and girls and makes two assertions. First, while there has been tremendous progress in our understanding of how male violence against women and girls undermines gender equality and impacts their right to autonomy and full citizenship, the most fundamental and basic consequence of such violence - physical and …

Hiv/Aids And Human Rights In Botswana And Swaziland: A Matter Of Dignity And Health, Vincent Iacopino, Sheri D. Weiser, Madhavi Dandu, David Tuller

UC Law SF International Law Review

A health and human rights framework provides a comprehensive perspective for understanding complex interactions between HIV/AIDS, human rights, and the health of individuals and communities. By helping to identify a broad range of social factors that affect health, such a framework also facilitates the development of interventions and policies that maximize both health and human rights benefits. In this Article, we discuss the various linkages between health and human rights and review the literature on HIV/AIDS and human rights, with a focus on under-resourced settings. In particular, we examine how the framework is relevant to the specific epidemics in Botswana …

Immigration, Crime, And Public Perception: Victimization Legislation In The United States And Canada - Can The U Visa Serve As A Model?, Bettina Rodriguez Schlegel

UC Law SF International Law Review

This Note compares the forces behind the creation and the implementation of crime victim visa legislation in the United States and Canada. Both are recognized globally as important immigrant-receiving nations with long histories of reliance on immigrant populations for economic growth and expansion. Both states have crafted immigration policies in line with their economic needs and societal perceptions of immigrants in relation to the dominant culture mores. This Note analyzes the two nation's historical trends in relation to immigration as a stepping stone towards understanding the current realities of immigrant life in North America and delves in to the impacts …

International Alchemy Within The Post-Copenhagen World: Transforming Critical Infrastructure Across Two Hundred Divergent Economics, Steven Ferrey

UC Law SF International Law Review

International solutions, reaching across different types of economies and systems of governance in two hundred world nations, have achieved a new urgency: Leading world climate scientists declare that in the next five years, the world is at a "tipping point" beyond which there is scant redemption from climate catastrophe. It is clear that solutions must quickly focus on a new energy infrastructure, somehow implemented across fundamentally different systems of national governance and economy, to abate rapidly exploding CO₂ emissions from unrestrained, cheap fossil-fuel energy use.

While the press coverage of the recent Copenhagen and Cancun international climate conferences concentrated …

Universal Jurisdiction To Prosecute Human Trafficking: Analyzing The Practical Impact Of A Jurisdictional Change In Federal Law, John Reynolds

UC Law SF International Law Review

Human trafficking is fast-growing international dilemma. This note evaluates the potential of universal jurisdiction to prosecute human trafficking to mitigate the crime's impact. Analogies are drawn to slavery and piracy, the paradigm crimes subject to universal jurisdiction. This note will also explore alternative approaches to combating human trafficking - political and economic approaches that attempt to undercut the root causes of human trafficking.

Immunity, Italian Style: Silvio Berlusconi Versus The Italian Legal System, Brendan Quigley

UC Law SF International Law Review

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is Italy's longest serving Prime Minister since the founding of the First Italian Republic in 1946. He is also one of Italy's richest men, owed largely to a vast media empire encompassing private television, film production, publishing, insurance, and banking. In conjunction with this private wealth and influence, the Prime Minister's political clout has afforded him virtually unparalleled power within Italy. Despite the scope of his influence, however, Berlusconi has been a constant subject of legal controversy since his rise to power in the early to mid 1990s. Over the years, he has been accused …

The Impunity Gap Of The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda: Causes And Consequences, Leslie Haskell, Lars Waldorf

UC Law SF International Law Review

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has achieved considerable success in bringing to justice those most responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. However, the ICTR's Prosecutor has failed to indict a single member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group that now governs Rwanda, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 1994 as a result of state noncooperation. Instead, the Prosecutor allowed Rwanda to conduct a sham trial into a notorious massacre involving thirteen clergy that his office had investigated. This Article takes a close look at this case and is based on the …

Electronic Medical Records And The Challenge To Privacy: How The United States And Canada Are Responding, Elana Rivkin-Haas

UC Law SF International Law Review

The rapid and continual advances in electronic record keeping create new and challenging privacy concerns in a variety of contexts. This Note examines the particular privacy issues countries face as their health care systems move towards more centralized, electronic medical record keeping. Electronic medical records provide for the increased collection, availability, aggregation, and dissemination of medical data which can facilitate more effective care, but can also leave people vulnerable to having private information misused. This Note focuses on the current privacy law framework in the United States and Canada. It will then explore whether the legal standards in these countries …

Fragrant Or Foul? - Regulation Of The Global Perfume Industry And The Implications For American Sovereignty, Caroline M. Reebs

UC Law SF International Law Review

The regulation of fragranced personal care products is increasingly scrutinized in the United States. As the FDA's cosmetic product requirements are minimal, particularly when compared to those followed by food producers and drug manufacturers, consumer groups emphasize the negative health implications. Industry, on the other hand, maintains that fragrances are safe for use and are effectively monitored by international trade associations. Because the government plays a modest role in cosmetic regulation, an arbiter is needed.

This Note examines the above concerns in a comparative light. The European Union's Cosmetic Directive imposes more requirements on cosmetic manufacturers and maintains a lengthier …

Workplace Bullying As An Occupational Safety And Health Matter: A Comparative Analysis, Susan Harthill

UC Law SF International Law Review

Workers who are bullied at work suffer physically and mentally, and can even be driven to suicide. There ought to be a law against workplace bullying, and in some countries, there is. Despite a growing body of interdisciplinary work highlighting the prevalence and costs of workplace bullying in the United States, there are currently no U.S. state or federal laws expressly addressing the issue, despite the ground breaking work and legislative efforts of workplace bullying pioneers, David Yamada and Drs. Ruth and Gary Namie. The dismal fact for American workers is that the U.S. lags behind many other countries when …

Constitutional Rigidity In Kosovo: Significance, Outcomes, And Rationale, Fisnik Korenica, Dren Doli

Pace International Law Review Online Companion

This article discusses the issue of constitutional rigidity from the perspective of the Constitution of Kosovo.  At the outset, the article analyzes the amendment procedure within the Constitution and its nature in terms of the actors and procedures involved.  Next, the article questions the nature of constitutional rigidity in Kosovo and seeks to address the position of veto players.  Arguing that the Constitution of Kosovo is rather rigid, the article then questions the significance of constitutional rigidity in light of the model of separation of powers, human rights, and the Constitutional Court’s constitutional “updating” role.  The article concludes that constitutional …

Contextualizing Sexual Violence Committed During The War On Terror: A Historical Overview Of International Accountability, Ryan S. Lincoln

Articles

No abstract provided.

Latin America’S Indigenous Women, Courtney Hall

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Latin America’s indigenous women are as diverse as the land they inhabit. Their uniqueness is shaped by belonging to groups that have their own distinct history, traditions, and identity. Yet despite this diversity, indigenous women confront the same human rights challenges: racial, gender, and socio-economic discrimination. Without ignoring the diversity of indigenous women, a better understanding of their fundamental struggles can be gained by weaving these issues together in a comprehensive narrative.

Peeking Out From Behind The Curtain, Ian Reese

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Absconded by airport security to middle-of-nowhere Russia, Nikolai Alexeyev sat for several days in early September 2010 unaware of his infractions or of his fate. Like a page from a Cold-War spy novel, the point of his abduction was to terrorize; Alexeyev’s abductors psychologically tortured and berated him with homophobic remarks. Nikolai Alexeyev is the leading gay rights activist in Russia and has been a twisting thorn in the side of local and national government for several years. Upon his release, he resolved to agitate further by leading a public demonstration to boycott the Swiss International Air Lines for its …

Conflict Of Norms Or Conflict Of Laws?: Different Techniques In The Fragmentation Of International Law, Ralf Michaels, Joost H.B. Pauwelyn

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most pressing topics in current international law is fragmentation. Traditionally, most constructive attempts to deal with fragmentation have been based on analogies what one of us, in an earlier book, called "conflicts of norms" - those rules in domestic law that deal with conflicts of norms within one legal system. In this article, we assess under what circumstances a different approach, based on an analogy to conflict of laws - those rules in domestic law that deal with conflicts of norms between different legal systems - yields a more adequate structure. The result is that public international …

"Consumer Choice" Is Where We Are All Going - So Let's Go Together, Neil W. Averitt, Robert H. Lande, Paul Nihoul

All Faculty Scholarship

Globalisation of business makes it important for firms to predict how their behaviour is likely to be treated in the roughly 200 nations that have competition laws. In that context, a crucial question is: are we in a position to develop a common intellectual framework that would give coherence to policy statements made on specific competition related issues and, at the same time, be acceptable, broadly, in a variety of legal systems, not necessarily based on identical assumptions? We believe that the answer is “yes.” A concept is emerging as a possible source of unification for competition policies around the …

Global Problems In Domestic Courts, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

We face an increasing number of problems that are essentially global in nature because they affect the world in its entirety: global cartels, climate change, crimes against humanity; to name a few. These problems require world courts, yet world courts in the institutional sense are largely lacking. Hence, domestic courts must function, effectively, as world courts. Given the unlikelihood of effective world courts in the future, our challenge is to establish under what conditions domestic courts can play this role of world courts effectively and legitimately.

Symposium Introduction, Stephen Yale-Loehr

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

A profile of law professor and author John F. Murphy is presented, including information on his educational background, his teaching experience at institutions such as the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and his authorship of several books and monographs. Murphy's selection as a recipient of the 2011 Louis B. Sohn Award for Public International Law is also mentioned.

The Role Of International Law And Practice In Addressing International Tax Issues In The Global Era, Charles H. Gustafson

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

The article discusses the role of international law and practice in deciphering complex international tax policy and administration issues as of July 2011. An August 2009 deal between the U.S. and Switzerland, known as the U.S.-Swiss Agreement, is also mentioned. The international law of jurisdiction is examined as it relates to the issue of double taxation.