-
The Geopolitics of Constitutionalism in Latin America
Jorge L. Esquirol
Constitutionalism in the Americas unites the work of leading scholars of constitutional law, comparative law and Latin American and U.S. constitutional law to provide a critical and provocative look at the state of constitutional law across the Americas today. The diverse chapters employ a variety of methodologies – empirical, historical, philosophical and textual analysis – in the effort to provide a comprehensive look at a generation of constitutional change across two continents.
-
Understanding OFAC’s New Restrictions on Direct Financial Transactions with the Cuban Government
Jose Gabilondo
When Donald Trump became President, he promised to reverse the normalization process with Cuba begun by Barack Obama. In June 2017, President Trump announced a new framework for Cuba policy designed to redirect economic activity away from businesses operated by the Cuban military and towards the private sector. To that end, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control amended its Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR) to impose new travel and business restrictions with respect to Cuba. This chapter examines one of these new CACR provisions—31 C.F.R. §515.209, Restrictions on direct financial transactions with certain entities and subentities. Overall, 31 C.F.R. §515.209 creates a special regime of heightened sanctions within the Cuba sanctions program. The new provision promotes fissures and differentiation within the Cuban government by stigmatizing some sectors, i.e., military, intelligence, security, and privileging others. Another seeming goal is to use the licensing apparatus incident to better surveil changes in Cuban government. In effect, the new sanction sets out Platt-style parameters that reflect how the United States wants Cuban markets and state structure to evolve.
-
Big Law in Venezuela: From Globalization to Revolution
Manuel A. Gomez
This chapter focuses on Venezuelan corporate lawyers during the period 1994~2014, a time in which the country experienced abrupt changes in its political orientation and economic policies. In 1989, as a response to a crisis partially credited by a failure of the model of import substitutions and national industrialization. Venezuela opened its economy to the world. allowing foreign investment. freeing export-import trade and eliminating currency exchange controls. In particular in 1994, following a policy of economic openness touted as "oil opening'' (apertura petrolera) Venezuela allowed the entry of foreign investors in the oil business- an acti-rity that had been reserved to the state since 1974--and conversely, Venezuela acquired important refineries and expanded its business presence into foreign countries. Even though the oil opening policy was short lived. it had a profound impact on the transformation of Venezuelan business law firms and the legal profession at large. Starting in the early 2000s, Venezuela's political social and economic landscape changed drastically, which affected all segments of society, including the business sector, and the lawyers that serve it.
-
Corporate Lawyers and Multinational Corporations in Latin America and Spain: 1990-2015
Manuel A. Gómez and Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo
Latin American law firms resemble the so-called «Big Law" of the United States. As a result, this book uses the term “Big Law" to also refer to the Latin American firms that share those same features. The chapters that comprise this volume address the evolution and recent changes affecting the corporate legal sector providers in the selected countries, taking into account their specific social, political, and economic context.
The research presented here is drawn from a combination of interview and quantitative data, historical records, and other sources, which enabled the authors to paint a dense and contextualized sketch of the corporate legal services sector, and more generally about the legal profession of each country. This book covers the majority of countries in Latin America. It includes studies about countries ranging from the main economies like Brazil and Mexico to smaller ones like Nicaragua. This book also includes a chapter on Spain, given the strong historical, economic and political ties between Latin America and Spain, and the recent expansion of Spanish law firms into Latin America. This book pays special attention to the heightened interaction between Spanish and Latin American enterprises and their lawyers during recent times.
-
First Amendment Law Freedom of Expression & Freedom of Religion, 4th ed.
Arthur D. Hellman, William D. Araiza, Thomas E. Baker, and Ashutosh Bhagwat
This book reflects a basic truth: First Amendment law is caselaw. It thus edits cases lightly, and presents them in the Court’s own doctrinal structure, in order to reinforce the student’s learning of the law as the Court actually developed it. Notes and questions provide guidance in working with the opinions. Non-case materials (including drafts and memoranda from the Justices' private papers) are used to shed light on what was established by existing precedents and how a new decision changes (or does not change) the law. By giving primacy to the Justice' won words and the Court's own doctrinal structure, the book offers maximum flexibility for teachers to place their own imprint on the course.
New features in the Fourth Edition include:
- A reorganized chapter order reflecting the Court’s increased focus on the content-based/content-neutral distinction;
- A new, freestanding campaign finance chapter;
- An expanded treatment of the history and values of the Religion Clauses; and
- New problems based on recent appellate cases and news stories.
It also features a detailed Teacher's Manual offering comprehensive instructional guidance including references to online resources.
-
Toward Greater Synergy between Courts and Truth Commissions in Post-Conflict Contexts: Lessons from Sierra Leone
Charles C. Jalloh
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' Testing the optimism of that claim were the many fits and starts in the struggle for human rights that King helped to catalyze. The same is true of other events in the last half-century, from resistance to apartheid and genocide to equal and fair treatment in domestic criminal justice systems, to the formation of entities to prevent atrocities and to bring their perpetrators to justice. Within this display of myriad arcs may be found the many persons who helped shape this half-century of global justice-and prominent among them is William A. Schabas. His panoramic scholarship includes dozens of books and hundreds of articles, and he also has served as an influential policymaker, advocate, and mentor. This work honours William A. Schabas and his career with essays by luminary scholars and jurists from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The essays examine contemporary, historical, cultural, and theoretical aspects of the many arcs of global justice with which Professor Schabas has engaged, in fields including public international law, human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, and capital punishment.
-
Commodity Exchanges and Regulation
Jerry W. Markham
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) intensively regulates commodity futures, options, and swaps pursuant to the provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and federal banking agencies also have some jurisdiction over derivative financial instruments. This chapter describes the CFTC regulations, including registration requirements for designated contract markets, clearinghouses, and various swap market participants. It also describes the financial responsibility requirements imposed on futures commission merchants and safeguards for customer funds in the futures markets. Additionally, the chapter addresses prohibitions against misleading sales activities, deceptive trading practices, and price manipulations. Finally, it reviews the role of the SEC and bank regulators in regulating financial derivative contracts, particularly securities derivatives and foreign currency exchange transactions.
-
Regulation of Bank Financial Service Activities, Cases and Materials
Jerry W. Markham and Lissa L. Broome
This book has been completely revised and updated, referencing Dodd-Frank and developments after Dodd-Frank. The financial crisis is extensively discussed, including excerpts from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Final Report. The latest in capital requirements is also included. In addition, the book refers frequently to the June 2017 report from the Treasury responding to President Trump’s Executive Order of February 3, 2017, setting forth core principles to guide regulation of the U.S. financial system. The new edition of the book contains new sections on the structure of the banking industry (with updated charts and graphs), shadow banking, fintech, Madden v. Midland Funding, TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure Rule (TRID), Qualified Mortgages (QM) and Qualified Residential Mortgages (QRM), deposit advance products, alternative payment methods, the latest on bank capital, CFPB enforcement, updated comparative regulation (UK, Germany, Japan, and the EU), a consolidated section on anti-money laundering (AML), sanctions, and tax evasion (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, FATCA). The statutory supplement has also been updated and the statutory provisions are cross-referenced to Dodd-Frank sections which amend them.
-
Spanish Courts
M C. Mirow
Professor M.C. Mirow’s lead-off essay points out that while Spain devoted considerable resources to its New World possessions, Florida almost always was considered a region of minor, albeit strategic, outposts. Thus, its system of justice never fully developed into the standard structures of Spanish colonial government. Military governors, occasionally assisted by legally trained advisors known as asesores, acted as judges. The question of whether local municipal officers—known as alcaldes—served as magistrates remains an open one. Regardless, there were numerous tribunals in Spanish Florida. Litigants and officials recognized jurisdictional divisions and utilized distinct procedures for different kinds of cases, and criminal and civil matters were handled in ways consistent with Florida’s membership in the colonial Spanish world. In their administration of Florida, Spanish officials generated numerous documents. As Mirow notes, many of these have yet to be explored and remain waiting for researchers in archives in Cuba and Spain (and, increasingly, on the web).
-
Juan Solórzano Pereira
M. C. Mirow
This biography of the seventeenth-century jurist Juan Solórzano Pereira analyzes his major writings with particular focus on his justifications of Spanish activity in the Americas. The study addresses his views of papal authority, indigenous peoples, and Spanish rule through his use of Roman Catholic sources and doctrine.
-
Spanish Law and its Expansion
M. C. Mirow
This chapter provides an overview of the legal aspects of Spain's enterprise in the Americas. It addresses the uses of law in discovery, exploration and conquest; Castilian law before its expansion to new territories; the use of law to justify conquest; slavery and indigenous labour; institutions; sources of law; legal actors; and Spanish law after independence. It also presents some of the present debates surrounding the nature and construction of derecho indiano.
-
Big Law in Central America and the Dominican Republic: Growth Strategies in Small Economies
Carlos Taboada and Manuel A. Gomez
Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua once formed a single Spanish colony and did not become independent until the nineteenth century, when Panama and the Dominican Republic also became independent. Since then, each of these countries have taken their own path, developed their own legal systems and confronted their own economic, political and social realities. Interestingly, in the eyes of many multinational corporations, these countries still form a somewhat homogeneous sub-region.
Treating these relatively small economics as a single sub-region within Latin America allows multinationals to take advantage of economics of scale. In any case, the geographical proximity, common language and regulatory proximity between these countries seem to justify the unitary approach. Except for the Dominican Republic, which is part of an island, the rest are all neighboring countries ( Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama) sharing at least one border with another. The official language in each of these countries is Spanish, and their legal systems are rooted in the civil law tradition, which they inherited from Spain.
-
Copyright Class Struggle: Creative Economies in a Social Media Age
Hannibal Travis
Earning an income in our time often involves ownership of or control over creative assets. Employing the law and philosophy of economics, this illuminating book explores the legal controversies that emerge when authors, singers, filmmakers, and social media barons leverage their rights into major paydays. It explores how players in the entertainment and technology sectors articulate claims to an ever-increasing amount of copyright-protected media. It then analyzes efforts to reform copyright law, in the contexts of 1) increasing the rights of creators and sellers, and 2) allocating these rights after employment and labor disputes, constitutional challenges to intellectual property law, efforts to legalize online mashups and remixes, and changes to the amount of streaming royalties paid to actors and musicians. This work should be read by anyone interested in how copyright law - and its potential reform - shapes the ownership of ideas in the social media age.
-
Exile or Extinction: the Assyrian Genocide from 1915 to 2015
Hannibal Travis
For a brief period, the attention of the international community has focused once again on the plight of religious minorities in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In particular, the abductions and massacres of Yezidis and Assyrians in the Sinjar, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Baghdad, and Hasakah regions in 2007–2015 raised questions about the prevention of genocide. This book, while principally analyzing the Assyrian genocide of 1914–1925 and its implications for the culture and politics of the region, also raises broader questions concerning the future of religious diversity in the Middle East. It gathers and analyzes the findings of a broad spectrum of historical and scholarly works on Christian identities in the Middle East, genocide studies, international law, and the politics of the late Ottoman Empire, as well as the politics of the Ottomans' British and Russian rivals for power in western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean basin.
-
Introduction : The Assyrian Genocide Across History: Collective Memory, Legal Theory, and Power Politics
Hannibal Travis
For a brief period, the attention of the international community has focused once again on the plight of religious minorities in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In particular, the abductions and massacres of Yezidis and Assyrians in the Sinjar, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Baghdad, and Hasakah regions in 2007–2015 raised questions about the prevention of genocide. This book, while principally analyzing the Assyrian genocide of 1914–1925 and its implications for the culture and politics of the region, also raises broader questions concerning the future of religious diversity in the Middle East. It gathers and analyzes the findings of a broad spectrum of historical and scholarly works on Christian identities in the Middle East, genocide studies, international law, and the politics of the late Ottoman Empire, as well as the politics of the Ottomans' British and Russian rivals for power in western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean basin.
-
Understanding Civil Rights Litigation
Howard Wasserman
This student-focused treatise provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive, and readable overview of the doctrine, policy, history, and theory of civil rights and constitutional litigation under Section 1983 and its Bivens federal counterpart. The book is written for courses on Civil Rights Litigation and Federal Courts; it can function as a primary assignment, as an assigned or recommended case and statutory supplement to a casebook or case materials, and as an additional study guide for students wanting additional background, context, and synthesis of the material.
The new edition:
- Covers all aspects of civil rights and constitutional litigation, including the history of civil rights legislation in the United States; the substantive elements of Section 1983 and Bivenscauses of action; individual immunity defenses; governmental liability and immunity; procedural and jurisdictional hurdles; abstention; and remedies.
- Covers doctrinal changes from the Supreme Court since the previous edition, including on Bivens actions, individual officer immunity, abstention, and the scope of injunctive relief.
- Discusses recent nationwide litigation campaigns over marriage equality and immigration policies to illustrate how plaintiffs and governments litigate these issues.
- Includes appendices containing the United States Constitution, Emancipation Proclamation, and selected substantive, jurisdictional, and procedural federal statutes that regularly are involved in civil rights and constitutional litigation.
- All topics and sub-topics include “Puzzles,” short problems (drawn from lawsuits and recent lower-court decisions) for use in class discussions and for student study and review.
-
Patriarchy, Not Hierarchy: Rethinking the Effect of Cultural Attitudes in Acquaintance Rape Cases
Eric R. Carpenter
Do certain people view acquaintance rape cases in ways that favor the man? The answer to that question is important. If certain people do, and those people form a disproportionately large percentage of the people in the institutions that process these cases, then those institutions may process these cases in ways that favor the man. In 2010, Dan Kahan published Culture, Cognition, and Consent, a study on how people evaluate a dorm room rape scenario. He found that those who endorsed a stratified, hierarchical social order were more likely to find that the man should not be found guilty of rape. If Kahan is right, radical change may be necessary. The institutions responsible for handling sexual assault complaints – law enforcement communities, the military, and university and college administrations – are stratified and hierarchical, and are likely over-populated by people who are attracted to hierarchical institutions and who hold hierarchical world views. These institutions may need to be overhauled – or even replaced. However, the study has a serious methodological flaw: it uses the Hierarchy-Egalitarianism Scale to measure those hierarchical world views, and as this article demonstrates, this scale has reliability and validity issues. This article then applies a different methodology to the underlying data and shows that patriarchy, not hierarchy, explains the differences in guilt perceptions. This more accurate understanding of Kahan’s data carries important policy implications. Rather than radical change, targeted training that addresses inaccurate rape beliefs may be enough to ensure accurate processing of these cases.
-
From Bandung 1955 to Bangladesh 1971: Postcolonial Self- Determination and Third World Failures in South Asia
Cyra Akila Choudhury
This chapter examines the birth of a Third World and its fantasy of a different world order reflected in the Bandung principles through the lens of the independence struggle of Bangladesh. The chapter argues that the internal social, political and legal subordination of the Bengali majority population within Pakistan inevitably led to the breach of the principles by two of the most significant players at Bandung. The movement and principles were at odds with human rights obligations and toothless in the face of a humanitarian crisis. As this chapter will argue, the Bangladesh conflict of 1971 showed that contrary to Bandung’s assumption, the Third World state was not its people, and that state was not able to withstand the pressures of Cold War geopolitics or guarantee justice to its own people. The dominant responses to intrastate human rights abuses in the wake of the failure of Bandung and the limited success of NAM are all too familiar — military intervention under the color of humanitarian law to cope with the problem of internal conflict or non-interference and the acceptance of the killing of large numbers of civilians.
-
National and Transnational Security Regimes: South Asia
Cyra Akila Choudhury
With the rise of the Global War on Terror (GWoT) and the radicalization of Muslim communities, there has been an increase in surveillance, detentions, torture, militarization, and security technologies, tied to controlling political dissent, “terrorism,” and immigration. For many Muslims, men and women, ordinary activities (e.g. religious gatherings, religious speech and debate, and travel for work or pleasure) have become laden with the possibility of misconstruction, leading to serious criminal consequences. For the most part, reports of GWoT regulation have focused on Muslim men, who are the most likely to be targeted as terrorists. Increasingly, though, women in various Muslim-majority countries and the West are also participating in terrorism and are consequently also targeted. But in South Asia, the more serious gendered effects of national and transnational security regimes are a consequence not of participation in terrorism but rather of women’s families and communities. In other words, women are far more likely to be caught up in the GWoT and the regulation of the security state through their relationships and membership in Muslim communities. Muslim women have become political prisoners for resisting the GWoT; they have lost male support and become single mothers because of detention of their menfolk; and they have become organizers working to counter the suppression of political and human rights to resist the encroachments of the security state.
-
Formalizing Property in Latin America
Jorge L. Esquirol
Comparative Property Law provides a comprehensive treatment of property law from a comparative and global perspective. The contributors, who are leading experts in their fields, cover both classical and new subjects, including the transfer of property, the public-private divide in property law, water and forest laws, and the property rights of aboriginal peoples. This Handbook maps the structure and the dynamics of property law in the contemporary world and will be an invaluable reference for researchers working in all domains of property law.
-
LexisNexis Practice Guide: Florida Criminal Law, 2017 Edition
H. Scott Fingerhut
The LexisNexis Practice Guide: Florida Criminal Practice and Procedure gives you step-by-step guidance on the many procedural issues and topics relevant to Florida criminal practice and quickly points you to LexisNexis resources that help you build your case. With its concise writing style, streamlined chapter format, abundance of checklists and forms, multitude of references to leading and related cases, cross references to relevant analytical content, and extensive and authoritative guidance from a consultative board of experienced Florida practitioners and judges, you'll find more of everything that makes a practice guide valuable and easy for you to use.
-
Prudential Regulation in the Age of Internal Models
Jose M. Gabilondo
Some of the most significant changes in banking law since tl1e global financial crisis involve attempts to make banks more financially stable through more rigorous requirements about how they finance their lending and investment activities. Central to this is the growing use of quantitative models by banks and their regulators to conduct financial war games that simulate how a bank would fare under adverse market conditions. These models - known as "internal models" because they are often proprietary and non-public - attempt to simulate how future states of the market would impact a bank's financial structure, in particular its ability to absorb losses without interrupting operations. Regulators first approved these internal models in the 1990s to track some of the risks in bank investments held for trading. Since then, regulators have authorized model-based approaches for a wider range of financial risks - including credit and liquidity risks - and for some nonbank financial entities, like broker-dealers. Today, many banks use these models to comply with prudential regulation about safety and soundness.
-
Globalization: Debunking the Myths, 3d ed.
Lui Hebron and John F. Stack Jr.
Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this balanced and clearly written text explores globalization and its impact from economic, political, social, environmental, and cultural perspectives. Providing a framework and platform for student learning, the book gives readers the tools to unravel the complexities of globalization in all its facets. Lui Hebron and John Stack note that as a hot-button term, globalization is used to describe any number of changes within, among, and between societies and states. Their goal is to reduce the noise engulfing debates and interpretations of one of the most dynamic, contested, applauded, and disparaged phenomena of the twenty-first century. Arguing that current assessments—both positive and negative—of globalization are overblown, the authors treat the dramatically changing landscapes of world politics as less a revolution than an evolution of already established structures and patterns of transnational relations. They trace how globalization has affected individuals, societies, states, and intergovernmental and supranational organizations. Making sense of a world seemingly smaller and incomprehensibly larger, simultaneously centralizing and fragmenting, Globalization: Debunking the Myths offers both an indispensable introduction for undergraduates and a concise review for more advanced students.
-
The African Union, the Security Council and the International Criminal Court,
Charles Chernor Jalloh
Africa has been at the forefront of contemporary global efforts towards ensuring greater accountability for international crimes. But the continent's early embrace of international criminal justice seems to be taking a new turn with the recent resistance from some African states claiming that the emerging system of international criminal law represents a new form of imperialism masquerading as international rule of law.
This book analyses the relationship and tensions between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Africa. It traces the origins of the confrontation between African governments, both acting individually and within the framework of the African Union, and the permanent Hague-based ICC. Leading commentators offer valuable insights on the core legal and political issues that have confused the relationship between the two sides and expose the uneasy interaction between international law and international politics. They offer suggestions on how best to continue the fight against impunity, using national, ICC, and regional justice mechanisms, while taking into principled account the views and interests of African States.
