2012 Course Descriptions
International Sport: Organization, Business, and Dispute Resolution
The first term of this course will deal with the way in which sport is organized, which opportunities exist to generate income (intellectual property rights, their exploitation through TV broadcasting rights, sponsoring, merchandising agreements, etc.)and the way championships or competitions can be structured in order to maximize these opportunities. Litigation in sport, in general, and with respect to these issues, in particular, will also be addressed as such and in order to set the scene for the second term of the course. With a view to putting these various topics into perspective, two well-known international competitions will be extensively used as examples: The America’s Cup and Formula One. The second term of the course will examine the jurisprudence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Organization of the tribunal, and the resolution of cases related to doping, officiating error, gambling and eligibility will be examined. Consideration will be given to whether the emerging jurisprudence of the CAS/TAS constitutes an international lex sportiva.
TAUGHT BY PETER AND HAAGEN
(2 semester-hours of credit)
Introduction to American Law
The first term of this course will introduce students to some of the distinctive aspects of United States law and legal institutions. The U.S. legal profession will be examined, including legal education, admission to the Bar and regulation of lawyers. Discussions will then focus on the U.S. judicial system and will include the differences between the federal and state court systems and the roles of judicial decisions and legislation as sources of law. The U.S. Constitution will be introduced through the discussion of several U.S. Supreme Court cases which address issues being hotly debated in the United States today. Finally, in the first term, the course will focus on the adversary system and jury trials, including a discussion of the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Evidence. Students in the class will participate in a mock civil jury trial to close out the first term. In the second term of the course, the focus will turn to the basic principles of American constitutional law. First, consideration will be given to the scope of constitutional rights, particularly those deriving from the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Second, the interplay between American law and politics will be explored, focusing especially on how constitutional rules shape the election process and the rules about campaign financing. Again, the U.S. Constitution will form the backdrop for class discussion, particularly the rights to vote, to political speech, and to fair representation. The course will conclude with a discussion of the most significant constitutional controversy to reach the Supreme Court in recent years: the constitutional challenge to the recent health care reform law. On the final day, students will present Supreme Court-style oral arguments based on the issues discussed throughout the course.
TAUGHT BY McALLASTER AND MAUPIN
(2 semester-hours of credit)
The Law of Energy and the Environment
Energy is the life blood of modern society. It has also become a highly controversial field, in particular because of different energy sources’ environmental impacts. The first term of the course will explore the legal and policy issues regulating the ownership, production and consumption of energy as well as efforts to address the resulting environmental impacts. Energy sources studied will include coal, natural gas, hydropower, nuclear and renewables. The course will consider both domestic (e.g., the United States) and international legal frameworks. Throughout the course, consideration will be given to the difficult balance between satisfying societies’ energy needs with environmental protection. The second term of the course is intended to provide students with a firm understanding of the main legal issues related to the relationship between a foreign investment in the energy sector and the protection of the environment. The basic principles and rules on the protection of foreign investment, including those on the settlement of disputes, will be examined by using the Energy Charter Treaty. Discussion will then turn to the environmental provisions included in investment-related international treaties, including the Energy Charter Treaty and its Protocol on Energy Efficiency and Related Environmental Aspects, as well as the wealth of bilateral investment treaties and the relevant regional economic integration treaties (including the European Union and NAFTA). Finally, the course will examine the question of indirect expropriation in case of the exercise of regulatory powers for the protection of the environment. Several leading arbitral cases, including Methanex v. United States and Chevron v. Ecuador will be fully examined.
TAUGHT BY SALZMAN AND GAZZINI
(2 semester-hours of credit)
Reconciling Human Rights and Intellectual Property
This course explores the intersections between intellectual property and human rights law and policy. The relationship between these two fields has captured the attention of governments, policymakers, and activist communities in a diverse array of international and domestic political and judicial venues. Some actors have raised human rights arguments as counterweights to the expansion of IP protection in areas including freedom of expression, public health, education, privacy, agriculture, and the rights of indigenous peoples. At the same time, the creators and owners of IP are asserting a human rights justification for the expansion of legal protections. The first term of the course introduces the key rules and institutions of each legal regime and the conceptual competing frameworks for analyzing their relationship. It then applies these frameworks to the issue of pharmaceutical patents and access to medicines. The second term of the course examines several other interfaces between IP and human rights on the international plane, emphasizing the potentially conflicting approaches that different legal regimes adopt and the tools international law offers to address such conflicts. It contrasts creators’ human rights to the traditional economic concept of IP rights and further to the human right to property. The latter right overlaps with international investment protection – for example against acts of direct or indirect expropriation by a host state. Another interface concerns copyright protection for textbooks and other scientific material and the human right to education and cultural participation. Current initiatives as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) serve as case studies which can be examined from the IP and the human rights perspectives. The final section of the course addresses indigenous peoples’ rights, the protection of traditional knowledge in international IP law, and attempts to introduce a global requirement for disclosing the use of such knowledge in patent applications.
TAUGHT BY HELFER AND GROSSE RUSE-KHAN
(2 semester-hours of credit)
Regulation of Nongovernmental Organizations
The first term of this course will examine the regulatory apparatus applying to NGOs – both purely domestic and international – in the United States. Included will be discussions of the process of achieving recognition of tax exempt status, and establishing eligibility to special tax benefits such as deductible charitable contributions, local property tax exemptions, and the like. The second term of the course will examine the international legal regime applicable to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Topics will include the basic private international law mechanisms which enable NGOs to act outside of their jurisdiction or origin, the consultative status they enjoy with the UN and other international organizations, and their standing with international courts and tribunals (or lack thereof). Certain “special” NGOs, such as the Red Cross, will also be addressed.
TAUGHT BY SCHMALBECK AND BARRA
(2 semester-hours of credit)
Responding to Terrorism: Different Perspectives of Applicable Law
The first term of this course will discuss, from the American perspective, legal issues regarding targeted killings by drone and the detention, interrogation and prosecution of alleged terrorists. It will include discussion of United States congressional statutes and case law, and the American interpretation of applicable international law. Specific attention will be given to the constitutional sharing of war powers between the President and the Congress, the choice of the “war paradigm” by the Bush and Obama administrations, the concept of “unlawful enemy combatants”, the United States’ rationale for detaining those captured on the battlefield at Guantánamo Bay, Supreme Court and lower court decisions regarding Habeas Corpus rights of those detained, presidential and congressional interpretation of international law regarding interrogation techniques, and the history and use of military commissions for prosecuting those who have committed violations of the law of armed conflict. The second term of the course will introduce students to international law regarding the admissibility to target, detain, interrogate and prosecute alleged terrorists, including from a European perspective according to which the fight against terrorism does not constitute an armed conflict. The issue will be analyzed from the perspective of international humanitarian law (IHL or the laws of war) and of international human rights law, and the interaction between those two branches will be discussed. Specific attention will be given to the concept of armed conflict, the difference between international and non-international armed conflicts, the distinction between civilians and combatants, the rules regarding when an individual may be targeted and the required procedural guarantees and rules on the treatment of detained enemies, both when the fight against terrorism constitutes an armed conflict (or occurs during such a conflict) and when it does not. In large part, both terms of the course will use, as a pretext, the jurisprudence and controversies surrounding the status and treatment of members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, in particular those held at Guantánamo Bay.
TAUGHT BY SILLIMAN AND SASSOLI
(2 semester-hours of credit)
