International Law Commons^™

Billion-Dollar Exposure: Investor-State Dispute Settlement In Mozambique’S Fossil Fuel Sector, Lea Di Salvatore, Maria Julia Gubeissi

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Alongside preparing for climate change, Africa should invest in the zero-carbon future, avoiding locking itself into the declining fossil fuel–based economy while taking advantage of the opportunities presented by decarbonization. However, investment treaties and investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) hinder, rather than catalyze, the transition to climate-friendly investment opportunities. This report shows how Mozambique’s international investment agreements and publicly available oil, gas, and coal contracts allow foreign investors to bypass the national judicial system and bring multi-billion-dollar ISDS claims against Mozambique. Such claims can result in significant costs for the country, and they also have a chilling effect on new public-interest …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Normative Impacts And Legitimacy Dimensions In The Intersection Of Trade And Agile Regulation Within Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements, Stefanie Schacherer

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The article revisits the rationale of regulatory policy commitments in FTAs and assesses their normative impact considering the emerging paradigm of regulatory agility. It argues that commitments on best regulatory practices and regulatory cooperation can lead to more efficient, effective, and flexible regulations thereby preparing countries to implement future-proof and agile regulation to tackle current challenges stemming from technology and sustainability. Moreover, by promoting international regulatory cooperation activities, comprehensive FTAs further evolve into open-ended, living agreements, which are prone to establish dynamic bilateral or plurilateral regulatory relationships. However, the article also shows that the functionalist rationale perspective on the trade-(agile)regulation …

European Union/Oecd/International - Klaus Vogel Lecture 2023: The Past, Present And Future Of Destination-Based Income Taxation., Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

A significant obstacle to the unilateral adoption of the OECD’s Pillar One are tax treaties since many countries cannot override tax treaties unilaterally. In his Klaus Vogel Lecture for 2023, Professor Reuven Avi-Yonah asks what are the chances for adopting a true multilateral convention for income taxation?

Applicable Law And The Civil And Common Law Divide, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

In examining the relevance of civil law and common law synergies in international arbitration, we often dwell on aspects of arbitral practice and procedure. This should occasion no surprise. Our attention turns to arbitral practice and procedure, for that is what we do, as arbitrator and counsel, and on a daily basis. Leaving aside investor-State arbitration, in which substantive public international law looms large, international arbitration is very much a procedural endeavor.

But it should not be forgotten that the differences between the civil law and the common law manifest themselves not only, and not even primarily, in practice and …

The Role Of Human Rights Indicators In Assessing Compliance With The Un Convention On The Rights Of People With Disabilities, Arlene S. Kanter

Georgia Law Review

In recent years, international human rights treaties have come under attack for failing to fulfill their promise. While it may be true that human rights treaties have not realized their full potential in every case, there is little discussion about how to measure the impact of treaties. This Article explores the ways in which we measure compliance with human rights treaties, focusing on the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD entered into force in 2008. Since then, 188 States Parties have ratified it. In addition, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently …

Identifying A Finacial Footprint Of Human Trafficking, Cardozo International Law Society (Cils)

2023–2024 Flyers

No abstract provided.

Ukraine, Urban Warfare, And Obstacles To Humanitarian Access: A Predicament Of Public International Law, Harriet Norcross Eppel

BYU Law Review

Humanitarian assistance is not carried out in a vacuum. As urban warfare historically complicates humanitarian aid’s access to civilians in war zones, Ukraine, having suffered and still facing highly publicized violence in civilian-dense areas, has encountered dire obstacles in acquiring necessary resources for civilians’ survival, including both direct and incidental attacks on humanitarian access. Thus, it is vital the international legal community take measures to mitigate current and future dangers of urban warfare, as well as design new solutions, such as strengthening current international law under which obstructing humanitarian access constitutes a violation of jus cogens principles, attempting to induce …

Human Rights Without Borders, Christian Gonzalez Chacon

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

In the current global context, millions of people are forced to migrate

yearly for reasons ranging from persecution and violence, internal armed

conflicts, and forced displacement, to lack of employment and climate

change. In the Americas, we recently witnessed the phenomenon of the

“migrant caravans,” where thousands of people, mostly from the Northern

Triangle of Central America—El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—

were willing to walk hundreds of miles to enter the U.S.-Mexico border to

escape poverty and violence in their countries. Another caravan of close to

10,000 migrants from the Northern Triangle of Central America including

Guatemala, El Salvador and …

Pillar 2 And The United States: What's Next, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

January 1 marked the official effective date of the 15 percent global corporate minimum tax imposed by pillar 2 as part of the G-20/OECD/ inclusive framework base erosion and profitshifting 2.0 project. Pillar 2 went into effect in Australia, Canada, the EU, Japan, Norway, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, with more countries expected to adopt it soon, including low-tax countries like Barbados, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Critics have argued that pillar 2 violates tax treaties, customary international law, or bilateral investment treaties. But it seems unlikely that legal challenges against it will succeed. Most of the countries …

Digital Terror Crimes, Cody Corliss

Law Faculty Scholarship

Terror actors operating within armed conflict have weaponized social media by using these platforms to threaten and spread images of brutality in order to taunt, terrify, and intimidate civilians. These acts or threats of violence are terror, a prohibited war crime in which acts or threats of violence are made with the primary purpose of spreading terror among the civilian population. The weaponization of terror content through social media is a digital terror crime.

This article is the first to argue that the war crime of terror applies to digital terror crimes perpetrated through social media platforms. It situates digital …

The Status Of The Icj Case Of Ukraine V. Russia, Anne Harper

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of eastern Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia claimed that the use of force in Ukraine was justified since Ukraine was committing genocide. Within a few days, Ukraine filed a petition with the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Ukraine evoked the ICJ’s jurisdiction under Article IX of the Genocide Convention, which provides the ICJ with jurisdiction to resolve “[d]isputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfillment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in …

The International Criminal Court And International Court Ofjustice: Similarities And Differences, Frank Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

Two international courts, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), have been in the news recently for theirroles in addressing allegations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. This post explains these courts’ similarities and differences and describestheir distinct roles in this and other international crises.

Seizure Of Russian Corporate Assets: Prosecution Of Russian Corporations For War Crimes In Ukraine As A Precursor To Seizure Of Frozen Corporate Assets In Foreign Jurisdictions, Milena Sterio, Federica D’Alessandra, Michael J. Kelly, Lydia Korostelova, Dmytro Koval

Law Faculty Reports and Comments

This White Paper proposes a criminal litigation pathway within a broader rule of law context for legally securing those assets, which Ukraine can then utilize to begin the rebuilding process without having to wait through more years of depredation and harsh winters. Doing so through a legal process such as that outlined in this White Paper is going to be key to Ukraine’s future as a democracy, as a candidate to join the European Union, as a candidate to join NATO, and as a rule of law society that is trusted and safe enough to attract substantial foreign direct investment.

Zero-Option Defendants: United States V. Mclellan And The Judiciary's Role In Protecting The Right To Compulsory Process, Wisdom U. Onwuchekwa-Banogu

JCLC Online

How does one obtain evidence located outside the United States for a criminal trial? For prosecutors, the answer is an exclusive treaty process: Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs). Defendants, on the other hand, may only use an unpredictable, ineffective, non-treaty process: letters rogatory. The result is a selective advantage for law enforcement at the expense of the defendant. Though this imbalance necessarily raises Sixth Amendment Compulsory Process Clause concerns, MLATs have remained largely undisturbed because defendants still have some form of process, albeit a lesser one. But what happens when the letters rogatory process is also closed off to the …

30 Years Removed, Oil-Spill Liability Insurance's Evolution Since The 1989 Exxon Valdez Incident, Rejo Mathew

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

In the thirty years since the Exxon Valdez incident, much has changed. This article looks back at the events of the accident and the subsequent changes to the marine pollution insurance industry, from the statutes regulating oil tankers in 1989 to the Oil Pollution Act of the 1990. The regulatory framework resulting from the Exxon Valdez is examined and compared to the litigation deriving from the spill.

Legal, Policy, And Environmental Scholars Discuss Global Food Systems At Indiana Law Symposium, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law and its Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies are hosting scholars from around the country Friday and Saturday (Jan. 19-20) for an interdisciplinary discussion on one of the world’s most prevalent problems—food insecurity.

Data from the World Bank estimate more than 780 million people around the world suffered from chronic hunger in 2022. As climate change affects agricultural production and water accessibility, the problem could worsen in coming years.

“A Fragile Framework: How Global Food Systems Intersect with the International Legal Order, the Environment, and the World’s Populations” will bring together legal, policy, …

The Failure Of Australia's Voice Referendum: A Lost Opportunity For Progress?, Jennifer Grubman

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

On October 14, 2023, Australia held its first constitutional referendum of the twenty-first century. Had the referendum succeeded, a section would have been added to the Australian Constitution not only recognizing First Nations as the “First Peoples of Australia,” but also establishing a body known as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, or the Voice. This was not Australia’s first constitutional referendum concerning First Nations. In 1967, Australians voted in favor of an amendment to the Australian Constitution that granted “state and National parliaments … concurrent power” to legislate for the First Nations. However, unlike the 1967 referendum, the …

Introduction To The Symposium, Julian Arato, Jonathan Bonnitcha, Mavluda Sattorva

Other Publications

This symposium explores the interrelation and juxtaposition of private and public registers in the logics and practices of private international law, public international law, and foreign relations law. It is inspired by the scholarly work of a brilliant scholar and much-missed friend: Karen Knop, Professor and Cecil A. Wright Chair at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (1960–2022).

Global Brand Protection In Web 3.0: Blockchain Domain Names And New Legal Challenges, Vera Glonina

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

The development of blockchain technologies is changing the world by introducing new systems and opportunities. In particular, blockchain technologies are a key component of so-called Web 3.0, a new generation of the Internet, which incorporates “the idea of a new, decentralized internet built on blockchains, which are distributed ledgers controlled communally by participants.”

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on January 11, 2024. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.