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Richard Schmalbeck and Henk Vording

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.

Aya Fujimura-Fanselow and Misha Plagis

The course will focus on assessing both the opportunities and challenges of the international and regional human rights frameworks and human rights lawyering and advocacy. This will be done by engaging with a range of human rights issues, strategies, tactics, institutions, and law as well as through thematic case studies. The first half of the course will focus on the international human rights legal framework, including core instruments and legal institutions. It will address, among other topics, economic, social and cultural rights; gender; and the role of social movements. The second half of the course will then pivot to legal mobilization before the regional human rights systems. It will provide an opportunity to focus on some of the many specificities of the three major regional human rights systems found in Africa, the Americas, and Europe.

Rachel Brewster and Anna Marhold

This course will explore how trade relations between states are negotiated and governed in regional and multilateral institutions.  The course highlights the pluralistic and overlapping structure of modern international trade law where dozens of preferential trade agreements supplement and compete with the WTO's multilateral trade rules.  The course will focus on two specific challenges to the international trade system: resolving disputes over trade agreements and sustainable development, climate change and energy concerns. 

The first half of the course will focus on the regulation of the interlinked thematic issues sustainable development, climate change and energy regulation and assess their role in the multilateral trading system. It will explore whether the WTO legal framework facilitates or constrains the advancement of sustainable development and higher environmental standards by, inter alia, looking at the phase-out of environmentally harmful fossil fuel subsidies and discussing the role of labeling schemes. It will also look at developments at the plurilateral level, by, amongst others, studying the Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters in EU Free Trade Agreements.

The second half of the course focuses on how states resolve disputes once agreements have been negotiated.  Topics include who has standing to bring claims, the remedies available when breaches occur, and how to manage similar and competing claims in different institutional fora.  It will also examine a range of possible mechanisms to enforce agreements, including retaliation, monetary penalties, voluntary financial compensation, and renegotiation.

Jim Coleman and Pinar Ölcer

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.

Letizia Lo Giacco and Mara Revkin

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of international criminal justice, looking at both its foundations and institutional architectures, with an eye to major recent developments and controversies in the field. The first half of the course will provide a foundational understanding of international crimes, the principles governing the international criminal justice system, and the main features of key international judicial institutions, with particular emphasis on the International Criminal Court as the first permanent international criminal institution. The second half of the class will explore theoretical and conceptual problems in international criminal law including: the tension between individual and collective criminality and how this reflects on concepts of reparations and victims’ participation in international criminal proceedings and alternative justice mechanisms including truth and reconciliation commissions; tradeoffs between domestic and international prosecutions and efforts to address the limitations of both mechanisms through recent innovations in “hybrid” courts; calls for recognition of new crimes including ecocide that were not anticipated at the time of the draft of the Rome Statute; and the role of technology in collecting and preserving evidence. Drawing on current events, the course will further provide a test for how definitions of international crimes can be mobilized to tackle those global challenges (e.g., climate change), thus critically reflecting on the limits and possibilities of international criminal justice today.