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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.

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 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. 

In the second half, 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.

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. 

Curtis Bradley and Joris Larik

This course will consider some of the legal issues common to constitutional democracies, as well as to the European Union (EU) as a supranational entity, in allocating authority in the conduct of foreign affairs.  These issues include the distribution of powers between the legislative and executive branches relating to topics such as the making and unmaking of treaties, the conduct of diplomatic relations, and the use of military force.  They also concern the constitutional and other questions that can arise when nations delegate sovereign authority to international institutions.  Moreover, in federal systems and in the EU, there are issues relating to the vertical distribution of authority between the federal/supranational whole and its constituent parts in situations in which foreign affairs are implicated.  The course will further consider the proper role of courts in addressing foreign affairs questions, including their role in applying international law.  Finally, the course will reflect on broader issues concerning the nature of foreign relations law as a field of study and the potential benefits and pitfalls of comparative research in this area, drawing in part on the findings of the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law, which is edited by Prof. Bradley.  The first half of the course will compare and contrast how various constitutional democracies address common legal issues relating to foreign affairs.  The second half will focus on how these issues are addressed within the system of external relations of the European Union and its Member States.  The course will draw on contemporary examples and developments from various jurisdictions.