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Beyond Unprecedented S1 Ep4: Helping Small Businesses Survive – and Thrive
Get PDF“Everything Must Go.” “Permanently Closed.” “Space for Rent.” These signs of the time sum up the plight of many small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the federal government’s Payroll Protection Program and the Federal Reserve’s Main Street Lending Program helped businesses across the United States in the early months of the crisis, more than 100,000 of them have closed their doors forever, according to research by Yelp.
In the fourth episode of “Beyond Unprecedented”: The Post-Pandemic Economy, host Eric Talley welcomes Columbia Law Professors Lynnise E. Pantin ’03 and Tim Wu to discuss the types of assistance state and municipal lawmakers and the federal government can or should provide to keep small businesses afloat and why they are optimistic about the future for entrepreneurs.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented/1004/thumbnail.jp
Beyond Unprecedented S1 Ep6: Pandemic Pressures on Global Trade
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic slammed borders shut and brought global trade to a near halt. Farmers plowed crops under. International tourism plummeted. Global supply chains ruptured. Even as trade begins to rebound, the realization remains that the economic havoc from the pandemic will worsen political tensions already playing out in trade wars. Are there legal or regulatory solutions to better promote healthy global markets? And how will multinational institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and European Union fare in a time of increasing retrenchment and nationalism?
In the sixth and final episode of “Beyond Unprecedented”: The Post-Pandemic Economy, host Eric Talley welcomes global trade experts Anu Bradford, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization, and Petros Mavroidis, Edwin B. Parker Professor of Foreign and Comparative Law, to talk about the fallout when trade wars heat up in a pandemic – and whether the WTO is equipped to deal with the political tensions caused by China’s economic power at a time when trade partners want to protect their critical industries from pandemic-related economic damage.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented/1006/thumbnail.jp
Executive Summary on Ensuring Economic Viability and Sustainability of Coffee Production
Get PDFCoffee, the world’s favorite beverage, provides livelihoods for at least 60 million people across dozens of countries. Yet this beloved drink is experiencing a sustainability crisis. A sustained decline in world coffee prices has squeezed coffee producers, and thrown a tremendous number of producers below the global extreme poverty line of US$1.90 per day. This briefing note presents our research into sustainability within the coffee sector, including the results of our analytical and empirical modeling, and provides several recommendations
Roman Law and Economics, Vol. 1: Institutions and Organization
No full textAncient Rome is the only society in the history of the western world whose legal profession evolved autonomously, distinct and separate from institutions of political and religious power. Roman legal thought has left behind an enduring legacy and exerted enormous influence on the shaping of modern legal frameworks and systems, but its own genesis and context pose their own explanatory problems. The economic analysis of Roman law has enormous untapped potential in this regard: by exploring the intersecting perspectives of legal history, economic history, and the economic analysis of law, the two volumes of Roman Law and Economics are able to offer a uniquely interdisciplinary examination of the origins of Roman legal institutions, their functions, and their evolution over a period of more than 1000 years, in response to changes in the underlying economic activities that those institutions regulated.
Volume I explores these legal institutions and organizations in detail, from the constitution of the Roman Republic to the management of business in the Empire, while Volume II covers the concepts of exchange, ownership, and disputes, analysing the detailed workings of credit, property, and slavery, among others. Throughout each volume, contributions from specialists in legal and economic history, law, and legal theory are underpinned by rigorous analysis drawing on modern empirical and theoretical techniques and methodologies borrowed from economics. In demonstrating how these can be fruitfully applied to the study of ancient societies, with due deference to the historical context, Roman Law and Economics opens up a host of new avenues of research for scholars and students in each of these fields and in the social sciences more broadly, offering new ways in which different modes of enquiry can connect with and inform each other.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1246/thumbnail.jp
Environmental Injustice: How Treaties Undermine Human Rights Related to the Environment
Get PDFGrowing cries for action to effectively address the climate and other environmental crises hold important implications for the governance of cross-border investments. Policymakers and environmental advocates have often overlooked how provisions granted by states in international investment agreements (IIAs) have been used by investors to challenge government measures taken in the public interest to protect the environment and advance environmental justice.
This 2019 paper, published in the Sciences Po Legal Review issue devoted to the climate crisis, explains how the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, made available to investors in thousands of bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements, may influence the future of environmental justice. It revisits and builds upon discussions of how ISDS may chill legitimate and necessary regulation (or shift the costs thereof), elaborating upon theories of chill and providing examples of how ISDS has been used to challenge actions taken to address the climate crisis and protect threatened water resources. The paper also then explores implications for the environmental justice dimensions of environmental regulation, describing how ISDS can undermine democratic processes and stakeholders’ abilities to meaningfully participate in environmental decisionmaking and protect their rights. The paper concludes with recommendations on how states can address the systemic impact of ISDS on regulatory space over environmental and other matters of public interest
Exemplary Legal Writing 2019: Four Recommendations
Get PDFPart of the purpose of recommending exemplary law books of the past year to readers of the Green Bag is to bring to their focus books even such erudite readers may not have noticed that nonetheless deserve their attention
An Opening: Advocating for Equity in a Polarized America
Get PDFAmerican society is facing a daunting array of political and social challenges. The ascendance of Trump reflects deep political fissures that seem to have calcified over the last four years. Blatant racist appeals have become part of ordinary politics and our core democratic foundations have been shaken by the emergence of an ethno-nationalist populist ethic that is skeptical of government and evidence based expertise. The killings by police of unarmed black people, and the convulsive protests in response, made plain the persistence of racism. The pandemic has further ravaged our society: exposing pre-existing race- and class-based inequalities, and — by destabilizing health, income, housing, and neighborhoods — threatening to exacerbate those inequalities. As we recover from the pandemic amid government budget cuts and unemployment, the political possibilities risk being constrained by a narrative of scarcity
Climate Change, Coming Soon to a Court Near You – Report Three: National Climate Change Legal Frameworks in Asia and the Pacific
Get PDFNational legal and policy frameworks underpin international climate action because they are the backbone of domestic responses to the climate emergency. Unless they support global objectives, local climate action stalls. Concerned by sluggish national responses to climate change or injured by its impacts, citizens are filing lawsuits, making courts central to national climate governance. To adjudicate these lawsuits, courts require current information about their climate change legal and policy frameworks. This report provides holistic syntheses of the climate legal and policy frameworks of 32 countries in Asia and the Pacific and discusses key legislative trends and climate-relevant constitutional rights
The Law and Science of Climate Change Attribution
Get PDFThere is overwhelming scientific agreement that human activities are changing the global climate system and these changes are already affecting human and natural systems. The observational record shows that the planet is getting significantly warmer, with eighteen of the nineteen warmest years on record occurring since 2001. Other observed changes include rising sea levels, ocean warming and acidification, melting sea ice, thawing permafrost, increases in the frequency and severity of extreme events, and a variety of impacts on people, communities, and ecosystems. There are multiple lines of evidence linking these changes to anthropogenic influence on climate
The Law of Enhanced Weathering for Carbon Dioxide Removal
Get PDFDespite scientists’ dire warnings about the catastrophic impacts of climate change, the greenhouse gases that cause it continue to be emitted in substantial amounts. While there is no question that deep, across the board cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are essential, many scientists now agree that simply cutting future emissions will not be enough. It will also be necessary to remove previously-emitted greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This paper explores one greenhouse gas removal technique – enhanced weathering – which involves spreading finely ground silicate rocks or other materials with similar chemical composition over land or ocean waters. The materials react with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, sequestering it in mineral form (e.g., as limestone) on land or in the oceans. While further study is needed to fully evaluate the risks associated with enhanced weathering, initial research suggests that it could result in the long-term storage of large amounts of carbon dioxide, likely for centuries or millennia.
This paper examines the international and U.S. legal framework for enhanced weathering on land and in ocean waters. The paper identifies international and U.S. federal and state laws that could apply the performance of enhanced weathering projects. Laws applicable to the sourcing of materials for use in such projects are dealt with in a separate (forthcoming) paper by the author