Institute Courses
Classes will meet on weekdays in the mornings and afternoons, and no courses will be offered simultaneously. Classes will be limited in size in order to facilitate interaction between faculty members and students. Foreign students considering further study or the practice of law in the United States will benefit especially from the Introduction to American Law course, from the case method of teaching, and from frequent interaction with faculty members and fellow students. Classroom instruction will be supplemented by visits to international organizations and law firms.
Courses will be divided into two two-week terms, each of which (except for Introduction to American Law) will be taught by faculty members from different legal cultures in order better to expose participants not only to comparative law studies but also to different teaching methods. Students may enroll in as many as three courses for a maximum of six semester hours of credit. Students must enroll in the same courses for both terms of the program. Netherlands lawyers may, however, attend a single course for one or both terms.
All instruction will be in English. Written materials for each course will be supplied at no extra charge at the time of registration at the Institute. Any additional reference materials will be made available at the program site. Library facilities will be available at the Leiden University. Students will also have access to computer facilities.
Those participants who are matriculated at Duke University School of Law may apply academic credits earned in the program toward their degree requirements. Member schools of the Association of American Law Schools normally will award J.D. credit for any course satisfactorily completed in the program as well. The program of study is offered as part of the fully accredited curriculum of the Duke University School of Law.
2020 Courses
Richard Schmalbeck and Irma Johanna Mosquera Valderrama
This course is an introduction to international income taxation of business transactions. After a brief explanation of basic income tax concepts, the principal rules of taxation relating to international business will be examined. The course will then focus on how the United States’ rules interact with taxation systems in other countries, exploring the concepts of source of income and residence of the taxpayer, and their role in the tax rules relating to international trade. The second term of the course will focus on bilateral tax treaties as a means of promoting crossborder investments and international trade through the avoidance of international double taxation. The OECD model treaty will be examined as an illustration of the interaction between double tax treaties and domestic regulations. Finally, the course will explore recent developments in the international effort to reduce tax-base erosion and income shifting among taxing jurisdictions.
Helen Duffy and Jayne Huckerby
This course provides a framework for understanding strategic human rights litigation and advocacy, assessing its limitations and challenges, as well as positive impacts. As advocates around the globe increasingly resort to litigation and advocacy—in national, regional, and international courts and/or forums—to protect and promote human rights, this course will explore what difference this litigation and advocacy makes in the real world, when and why. It will grapple with the legal, strategic, and other choices that are made around issues such as which rights’ violations to focus on in a given context; how to frame rights’ claims; where to lodge claims and choice of forum; building the evidence-base for claims (e.g., through fact-finding); remedies sought; and the ways in which strategic litigation and advocacy feature a range of human rights methodologies (e.g., documentation and messaging). The course will examine the multiple actors against whom strategic human rights litigation and advocacy is directed, from governments to non-State actors (e.g., corporations), to inter-governmental actors (e.g., the United Nations), considering how these different targets affect the legal claims and forums available to advocates. Issues ranging from the role of social movements, victims, and their representatives, in human rights litigation and advocacy to the challenges in the enforceability of judgments, will also be addressed. This course will draw heavily on case studies to illustrate these issues and to provide insight into the broader question of how to assess and enhance the effectiveness of strategic human rights litigation and advocacy in the future.
Joris Larik and Rachel Brewster
International trade agreements have been a source of significant political controversy in the last five years. In particular, the United States’ renegotiations of the NAFTA agreement and its threats to withdraw from the World Trade Organization, as well as the United Kingdom’s vote to withdraw from the European Union to enter into new trade agreements. This course will examine the process of entering into and exiting from international trade agreements from both American and European legal perspectives. The first half of the course will address how the United States makes trade agreements, implements them into domestic law, and exits from them. This half will also examine recent American practice at the WTO, including the de facto American withdraw from the WTO's dispute settlement system. The second half of the course will examine the EU's internal structure, how it makes international trade agreements, and the status of international trade law in the EU legal order. This half will also address the legal issues posed by BREXIT and the future of post-BREXIT trade negotiations.
Pinar Ölçer and James Coleman
This course will use comparative law methodology to examine contemporary criminal justice issues, including over criminalization, corporate criminal liability, prosecutorial discretion, and bribery and corruption. The course materials will explore how the U.S. system and other national systems respond to contemporary challenges. Readings also will consider how over-arching norms are transposed within supranational and international frameworks and down to national and subnational governments, from Europe to the United States (and vice versa) and back up to international treaties. Deeply and intricately tied into local legal frameworks and realities, criminal and criminal procedural law concerns an area of positive law in which it is famously difficult to gain consensus, even within one national sphere. Thus, what behavior should be criminalized, how law enforcement should be arranged, what constitutes fairness and just punishment all concern sensitive issues in the context of which “sharing” law can be difficult. Nevertheless, a great deal of “borrowing” or diffusion of law does take place, either informally or formally via international and supranational treaties or joint law enforcement efforts, in order to effectively combat crimes which are held to endanger international and transnational interests. Adopting similar rules – either by conscious decision or informal (judicial or executive) borrowing – does not always mean however that transplanted law will work, or work in the same manner in every environment, where contextual factors may have an impact on the way in which the law operates. By turning to distinct substantive and procedural themes within the domain of criminal justice, the aim is to gain understanding of the manner in which this type of law can be transposed to different contexts, what types of bottlenecks can be encountered therein and how issues of transposition can and should be dealt with.
Tom Metzloff and Deborah DeMott
This course is intended to provide an introduction to essential elements of the American legal system. Emphasis will be placed on exploring contemporary problems that reveal key issues and concerns within the American legal system. The first part of the course will focus on constitutional law, and will consider the role that United States Supreme Court plays in interpreting and applying key aspects of the Constitution. Specific topics will include a focus on recent Supreme Court cases involving affirmative action, gun control, and privacy rights, as well as a series of issues involving the First Amendment. The second part of the course will shift to the development of private law and its relationships to legislation and regulation. It will focus in particular on a distinctive portion of contemporary tort law: liability when a defective product causes injury, whether to the purchaser or someone else. We will examine cases testing the boundaries between contract and tort law and liability issues when a product is sold through an online platform, among others.
Carsten Stahn and Laurence Helfer
There are two dozen international courts (ICs) in operation today with jurisdictions covering a broad array of subjects. ICs have issued myriad rulings on issues including the conduct of individuals during armed conflicts, respect for human rights, the legality of trade restrictions, territorial claims in the oceans and on land, and the protection of health, safety, and the environment. How have ICs established and maintained their authority and their legitimacy? Do different institutional design features—such as jurisdictional provisions, access rules, and standing requirements—affect whether ICs are effective in changing the behavior of states? What role do lawyers, national judges, and NGOs play in filing cases and promoting compliance with international judicial rulings? And what are the risks of backlash against ICs that overreach? This course explores these questions through a comparative analysis of global and regional ICs. Students will be exposed to different theoretical perspectives on international adjudication and to the decisions of a range of judicial bodies, including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, human rights courts in Africa, the Americas and Europe, and regional economic integration courts. More generally, the course analyzes the opportunities and challenges associated with building an effective system of adjudication in international law.