The Global Corporation as International Law Actor

by Joel Slawotsky

 The Second Circuit’s 2010 majority opinion in Kiobel v. Royal DutchPetroleum Co. held that corporations do not have obligations under international law and thus cannot have liability under the Alien Tort Statute. To prevent corporate liability would constitute a tantalizing incentive to engage in misconduct with the peace of mind no legal consequences will arise.  This Essay suggests that in addition to the argument that corporations are private actors under international law, the issue can also be examined from the other angle. Large global corporations should be considered actors under international law because large global corporations and states share similar characteristics empowering both to the status of actor. Both enjoy sufficient influence, control, and power capable of causing sever harm through violations of internaitonal law. Today, large corporations can wield more capital than many states, have dozens if not hundreds of “bases” of operation across continents, and often perform traditionally governmental functions. Moreover, traditionally state actors are increasingly operating in the arena of private corporate actors, operating large sovereign investment funds, state-owned companies and engaging in private market activity. Given the multiple roles states and private corporations play, and the ensuing erosion of distinctions, there is no reason that international law obligations should remain the sole province of sovereigns. The large global corporations are indeed international law actors and should have duties and responsibilities similar to a state government.

 

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An African Solution to an African Problem? How an African Prosecutor Could Strengthen the ICC

by Aminta Ossom

Nearly a decade after the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the institution is at a crossroads. The ICC is enjoying increasing influence on the world stage, even among some states originally opposed to its activities. At the same time, support for the Court among African states, which constitute the greatest number of state parties to the ICC’s governing statute and the only states in which the Court has active situations and cases, appears to be fading. This year, to challenge perceived geographic bias, the African Union encouraged its member states to endorse an African for the office of chief prosecutor in the Court’s upcoming elections, a move that raised concerns about possible politicization of the office. These concerns aside, the election of a qualified African prosecutor could enhance the profile of the Court in Africa. Moreover, such an election may well strengthen the Court by making the ICC more representative, by amplifying voices of African communities supportive of the ICC, and by further illuminating the need for the empowerment and reform of national justice systems whose inability or unwillingness to try crimes under international law domestically has given the Court motive to prosecute in the first place.

 

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President Obama's March 2011 Detainee Policy: Will it Make a Difference to Those Detained?

by Jonathan T. Flynn

   Over the last ten years, American and international observers have fiercely criticized U.S. detention policies for the perceived abuse of detainees and the allegedly unfair criminal process applied to them. Both the Bush and Obama Administrations have sought to quiet criticisms concerning U.S. detainee policy, with the most recent pronouncement, putting forth a more “values-oriented” approach, coming in a March 7, 2011, White House press statement. This Essay focuses on the Administration’s proclamations regarding the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions, analyzing what, if any, practical effect they will have on detainee treatment. Section I briefly reviews key post-9/11 U.S. decisions on the treatment of detainees and their Geneva-based status as detainees. Sections II and III analyze whether the March policy will change the day-to-day treatment of detainees, as well as the policy’s impact on detainee trials. This Essay concludes that the Obama Administration’s March announcement has virtually no practical impact on the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military and its treatment of detainees. Perhaps the more important impact of the announcement is in its symbolism. Obama’s statements make clear that the United States is moving away from abuse and toward fair trials, a renewed adherence to international law, and the acceptance and ratification of the APs. Optimistically, this in turn will enhance U.S. esteem within the international community and lead to positive international cooperation and development in the international law of armed conflict. 

 

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The Bribery Act's New Approach to Corporate Hospitality

by R. Zachary Torres-Fowler & Kenneth Anderson

Following the passage of the U.K. Bribery Act of 2010 (the “Bribery Act”), businesses both in the United Kingdom and abroad expressed great concern over the expansive extraterritorial implications the new law could have on their own conduct. Indeed, the Bribery Act’s prohibitions appear to extend far beyond those of its U.S. counterpart, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”). Among the most controversial of the Bribery Act’s provisions is the treatment of “corporate hospitality payments. The Bribery Act is so broad that it effectively treats all corporate hospitality payments to foreign public officials as prima facie violations. As a result, scholars analyzing the Bribery Act have explained its provisions “could potentially sweep in legitimate conduct.” 

On March 30, 2011, following months of criticism, the U.K. Ministry of Justice released its long awaited Guidance on the Bribery Act in order to assist businesses to better understand and comply with the law upon going into effect on July 1, 2011. Interestingly, while the MoJ Guidance sheds new light on the most troublesome provisions of the Bribery Act, it also indicates some backpedaling on the part of U.K. officials. The result has been to make this feature of the Bribery Act appear all the more like the FCPA. 

 

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Diplomatic or Consular Immunity for Criminal Offenses

by Tariq Hassan

Raymond Davis, a United States national, killed two Pakistanis in Lahore on January 27, 2011 — allegedly in self-defense. The Raymond Davis case had the potential to become a major foreign policy issue between Pakistan and the United States. The resolution of the issue was compounded by subsequent media reports that Raymond Davis was a CIA agent who was on assignment at the time of the double murder.  While keeping tight-lipped about its position on the question of immunity, Pakistan sought to explore alternative dispute settlement mechanisms to resolve this diplomatically sensitive and politically explosive matter. The Pakistani trial court resolved the case by applying Islamic law principles that allowed Raymond Davis to be released after the heirs of the victims were compensated. Even though the matter has been resolved privately through this compensation scheme, the handling of the Raymond Davis case has generated a lot of controversy and the outcome is not generally accepted by the Pakistani public, which still seeks answers to the host of issues — both factual and legal — about Raymond Davis’s official status and immunity, if any, arising therefrom. 

 

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VOLUME 52 :: No. 3

“Unwilling or Unable”: Toward a Normative Framework for Extraterritorial Self-Defense

by Ashley S. Deeks ~ Mar 01, 2012

Nonstate actors, including terrorist groups, regularly launch attacks against states, often from within the territory of another state. When a victim state seeks to respond with force to such attacks, it must decide whether to use force on the territory of a state with which it may not be in conflict. International law traditionally requires the victim state to assess whether the territorial state is "unwilling or unable" to suppress the threat itself. Only if the territorial state is unwilling or unable to do so may the victim state lawfully use force. Yet there has been virtually no discussion, either by states or scholars, of what that test requires. The test's lack of content undercuts its legitimacy and suggests that it is not currently imposing effective limits on the use of force by states at a time when transnational armed violence is pervasive.

This Article provides the first sustained descriptive and normative analysis of the test. Descriptively, it explains how the "unwilling or unable" test arises in international law as part of a state's inquiry into whether it is necessary to use force in response to an armed attack. It identifies the test's deep roots in neutrality law while simultaneously illustrating the lack of guidance about what inquiries a victim state must undertake when assessing whether another state is "unwilling or unable" to address a particular threat. Normatively, the Article plumbs two centuries of state practice to propose a core set of substantive and procedural factors that should inform the "unwilling or unable" inquiry. It then applies those factors to a real-world example - Colombia's use of force in Ecuador in 2008 against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - to explore how the use of these factors would affect the involved states' decisionmaking and the evaluation by other states of the action's legality. The Article argues that the use of these factors would improve the quality of state decision-making surrounding the use of force in important substantive and procedural ways.

Carving Out Policy Autonomy for Developing Countries in the World Trade Organization: The Experience of Brazil & Mexico

by Alvaro Santos ~ Mar 01, 2012

Although liberal trade and development scholars disagree about the merits of the World Trade Organization (WTO), they both assume that WTO legal obligations restrict states' regulatory autonomy. This Article argues for relaxing this shared assumption by showing that, despite the restrictions imposed by international economic law obligations, states retain considerable flexibility to carve out policy autonomy.

The Article makes three distinct contributions. First, it analyzes how active WTO members can, through litigation and lawyering, influence rule interpretation to advance their interests. Second, the Article redefines the concept of "legal capacity" in the WTO context and introduces the term "developmental legal capacity," which describes how states can use legal tools and institutions not only as a sword to open new markets but also as a shield for heterodox economic policies. Third, the Article offers a comparative analysis of two case studies, Brazil and Mexico, and shows that they have pursued different trade and litigation strategies. While subject to the same WTO obligations, these countries have made different use of their policy space according to their own economic objectives. The Article concludes that, despite the apparent rigidity of the WTO, countries following a deliberate strategy can expand their regulatory space to advance their own interests.

Moral Judgments & International Crimes: The Disutility of Desert

by Andrew K. Woods ~ Mar 01, 2012

The international criminal regime exhibits many retributive features, but scholars and practitioners rarely defend the regime in purely retributive terms - that is, by reference to the inherent value of punishing the guilty. Instead, they defend it on the consequentialist grounds that it produces the best policy outcomes, such as deterrence, conflict resolution, and reconciliation. These scholars and practitioners implicitly adopt a behavioral theory known as the "utility of desert," a theory about the usefulness of appealing to people's retributive intuitions. That theory has been critically examined in domestic criminal scholarship but practically ignored in international criminal law.

This Article fills this gap and argues that whatever its merits in the domestic realm, there are special reasons to be skeptical about the "utility of desert" claim in the international context. Moral intuitions as heuristics for moral judgments are error-prone, and the international criminal regime has a number of extraordinary features that may increase the likelihood and cost of these errors. These features include the complexity of the crimes; the diversity of stakeholders who possess heterogeneous intuitions; and the regime's multiple goals, some of which may be inhibited by moral condemnation. After examining these differences, the Article outlines the implications of the analysis for regime design. Some of these design implications accommodate the international criminal regime's current retributive approach, and some are fundamentally incompatible with retributivism.

Finding Legal Principle in Global Financial Regulation

by David Zaring ~ Mar 01, 2012

How does global financial regulation work? I propose six principles that organize its current practice: 1) a national treatment principle, 2) a most favored nation principle, 3) a preference for rulemaking over adjudication, 4) a subsidiarity principle of enforcement, 5) a peer review model of enforcement, and 6) a network model of institutionalization. Most of these principles are shared by other institutions that meet the criteria of formal international law.

These emerging doctrines and institutional arrangements are stable, principled, and accordingly increasingly amenable to traditional legal analysis. While financial regulatory cooperation, as it is currently structured, is not the same thing as public international law, it exemplifies the parallel development of legal and other forms of state obligation. Moreover, analyzing global financial regulation as a law-like institution offers new insights into an increasingly paramount form of the regulation of finance, one that is likely to be a principal accomplishment of twenty-first-century international cooperation.

Investment Treaties & Investor Corruption: An Emerging Defense for Host States

by Jason Webb Yackee ~ Mar 01, 2012

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are famously asymmetric. They grant investors rights but not obligations, while imposing upon states obligations unaccompanied by rights. Recent cases suggest, however, that BIT tribunals are poised to recognize a defense to state BIT liability that, in effect, imposes upon investors the obligation to avoid involvement in public corruption in the course of making a treaty-protected investment.

In this Essay, I sketch out the contours of this emerging defense, focusing on the recent investment treaty arbitration between Siemens AG and Argentina. Siemens was awarded over $200 million for Argentina's expropriation of its investment, but Siemens voluntarily abandoned the award in response to post-award revelations that Siemens had procured the investment through the systematic bribery of Argentine officials. While the Siemens tribunal never had the chance to rule on the legal consequences of the bribery allegations, jurisprudential trends suggest that it would likely have used the fact of corruption to either decline jurisdiction or to otherwise refuse to recognize Siemens's substantive treaty-based rights. I nonetheless argue that the specific contours of this emerging corruption defense are uncertain, and I suggest model investment treaty text for states that wish to secure their reliable access to it.

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