This seminar considers competition law and policy in a global economy. It examines the contribution of national law and enforcement as well as the variety of international enforcement and harmonization proposals that are under consideration at the present time. The course examines competition law and policy enforcement at the national level through a comparison of approaches in the U.S., the EC and selected other jurisdictions with respect to such key areas as horizontal cartels, vertical distribution restraints, abuse of dominance/monopolization, and competitor collaborations. The latter part of the seminar considers bilateral, multilateral and other international arrangements in place or under consideration at the present time. The seminar will require students to read cases, guidelines, hypotheticals, and essays. Background knowledge in U.S. antitrust or EC competition law and policy is a prerequisite.
This course examines from an inter-disciplinary perspective the law and economics of the WTO. After a brief introduction on the pros and cons of trade liberalization, we move to examine the WTO legal discipline (first an overview, then in detail). The course is sub-divided in three parts discussing the trade in goods, in services and the dispute settlement system. Particular attention is paid to the jurisprudential developments since the WTO is a highly incomplete contract, completed through its case law. There is no prerequisite for the course although knowledge of public international law is helpful.
The course's fundamental objective is to better prepare students for contemporary legal practice by introducing them to the basic issues and principles of international law (both public and private) and by equipping them with a keen comparative law perspective. In so doing, the course will explore both the special promise and the special challenges that these fields of law present.
The course is also distinct in methodology. It takes as its springboard a series of cases that have rich international or comparative law dimensions, but are also consciously modeled on concrete cases that students either encountered during the first semester (in contracts, torts, civil procedure, and legal methods), or are encountering concurrently in other second semester courses (in criminal law, property, and constitutional law), or are likely to encounter later in certain upperclass courses (such as regulatory law and criminal procedure).
The course will explore how these "internationalized" or "comparatavized" cases would be resolved, not only in the US and/or under US law, but also in other jurisdictions around the world and/or under other bodies of law. We will endeavor to arrive at possible explanations for the differences observed -- explanations that may lie in legal rules, the operation of judicial and other institutions, or the political economy of other countries. Included will be cases that arguably fall within the domain of, and thus interface with, regional (e.g. NAFTA) or international (e.g. WTO) legal regimes.
In short, the course aims to complement the basic domestic law orientation of the first year curriculum with distinctly international and comparative law knowledge and perspectives.
This course provides an introduction to the law of the European Union, examining the evolution and development of this (relatively) young and dynamic legal and political entity. The institutional growth and expansion of the EC/EU will be traced, both through the series of “step-changes” - the grand political moments resulting in formal Treaty amendment, including the recent adoption of a Charter of Rights and of a controversial (draft) Constitution - as well as through the gradual evolution of its constitutional order seen in the practice of the relevant legal and political actors. The topics examined will also include the major doctrinal developments of the European Court of Justice in the fields of constitutional and administrative law, and in a number of key areas such as the shaping of the internal market.
This seminar explores the institutional foundations of corporate governance around the world as a means of understanding the relationship between law and economic development. We start from the premise that all successful, market-oriented political economies must adequately respond to a common set of problems involving the accumulation and deployment of capital, and the organization and regulation of firms to engage in economically productive activity. By focusing on a series of recent, important corporate governance failures around the world, we seek to better understand both the commonality of the economic problems facing all market-oriented systems, and the diversity of institutional responses to these problems. The cases are drawn from a variety of countries in different stages of economic development, including the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, Korea, Poland, Russia and China.
This course covers the basic procedural problems that occur in disputes arising out of transactions that cross national boundaries. The focus is on access to American courts by foreign litigants, jurisdiction over foreign defendants, parallel litigation, pleading and proof of foreign law, effecting service and obtaining evidence abroad, (particularly in light of foreign blocking measures), transnational provisional relief, immunities and defenses (e.g., foreign sovereign immunity, sovereign compulsion, and act of state, international human rights litigation in US courts, and the enforcement of foreign judicial judgments. An entire chapter of the course is devoted to the procedural aspects of international commercial arbitration and the relationship between arbitral tribunals and courts.
All these issues have planning, counseling and drafting implications: choice of law, choice of forum, waivers of immunities, litigation versus arbitration, etc. This calls for a look at the organization of foreign courts in selected countries and the role of foreign legal professionals, relevant aspects of foreign civil procedure, and the principal problems associated with international arbitration.
The purpose of this seminar is to provide an interdisciplinary presentation and analysis of the WTO system. The seminar begins with an overview of WTO law and its dispute settlement system, as codified in the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), the only known paradigm of compulsory adjudication at the international level.
Each year the seminar takes a different substantive law focus. In the past several years, that focus has been on dispute resolution and on human health and safety. In 2005-06, as in 2004-05, the focus will be on WTO law and developing countries.
After the first several sessions, we proceed to a series of guest presentations on selected topics relating to WTO law and developing countries. Speakers are all renowned experts from the fields of law, political science, or economics, who will present papers reflecting their most recent work. Outside commenters are also invited to intervene. Students read the speakers' papers in advance of the seminar session and prepare written reaction papers which the speakers will have reviewed. Each seminar session is devoted to discussion of the papers, the comments and the students' observations. Students are required to submit a final reflection paper on the totality of the seminar readings and discussions.
This course also provides a general introduction to the issues of international criminal law, including the problems of jurisdiction, extradition, and the role of international criminal courts. The perspective will be that of a criminal lawyer rather than an international lawyer, with the primary concern directed to issues of legality and due process. The issues of criminal responsibility for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity will be analyzed critically and comparatively, with primary attention given to the problem of philosophical and legal foundations of international criminal liability.
This seminar examines the emergence of the system of human rights protection in Europe, looking briefly at the establishment of the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and subsequently at the evolution of the European Union legal order and the developing role of human rights protection within that order, culminating most recently in the adoption of the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights and its insertion within the (possibly ill-fated) EU draft Constitution. The interplay between these two closely linked but separate systems and their implications for national legal orders will be considered. The system of human rights protection in the EU will be comprehensively examined, from early judicial doctrine to very recent political and constitutional initiatives, including the role of human rights monitoring in the process of EU enlargement. A number of substantive issues or case studies both from the EU and from the more developed Council of Europe system are also examined, some of which help to illustrate the relationship between the EU and the ECHR, and others which reflect contemporary human rights dilemmas in Europe.
This seminar deals with various forms of international commercial arbitration. The International Arbitration Rules of the International Chamber of Commerce, the American Arbitration Association, UNCITRAL, and the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes are given special attention. Problems of foreign and American law relating to the drafting of arbitration agreements, the conduct of arbitration proceedings, and the enforceability of arbitral awards are studied. The stress is on practical aspects. The aim of the seminar is to prepare for the actual conduct of an arbitration proceeding. Various writing exercises are included.
