Global Health Research Center of Central Asia
Columbia Law School Scholarship ArchiveNot a member yet
5770 research outputs found
Sort by
Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory
No full textLiberal democracy is in crisis around the world, unable to address pressing problems such as climate change. There is, however, another path — cooperation democracy. From consumer co-ops to credit unions, worker cooperatives to insurance mutuals, nonprofits to mutual aid, countless examples prove that people working together can extend the ideals of participatory democracy and sustainability into every aspect of their lives. These forms of cooperation do not depend on electoral politics. Instead, they harness the longstanding practices and values of cooperatives: self-determination, democratic participation, equity, solidarity, and respect for the environment.
Bernard E. Harcourt develops a transformative theory and practice that builds on worldwide models of successful cooperation. He identifies the most promising forms of cooperative initiatives and then distills their lessons into an integrated framework: Coöperism. This is a political theory grounded on recognition of our interdependence. It is an economic theory that can ensure equitable distribution of wealth. Finally, it is a social theory that replaces the punishment paradigm with a cooperation paradigm.
A creative work of normative critical theory, Cooperation provides a positive vision for addressing our most urgent challenges today. Harcourt shows that by drawing on the core values of cooperation and the power of people working together, a new world of cooperation democracy is within our grasp.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1352/thumbnail.jp
Transferred Emissions Are Still Emissions: Why Fossil Fuel Asset Sales Need Enhanced Transparency and Carbon Accounting
Get PDFIn a widely reported trend, the “Oil Supermajors” — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies — are selling off many upstream fossil fuel assets.
Selling these assets to entities that will continue producing and selling the fossil fuel resources does not necessarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the supermajors have used these asset sales to support claims that they are making progress toward reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Emissions reporting frameworks allow companies to conflate the apparent emissions reductions from asset sales with direct reductions from efficiency improvements and asset retirements. In doing so, they hinder the ability of investors and the public to push for actual emissions reductions. In addition, the companies that buy these assets are sometimes governed by less rigorous reporting requirements and subject to less public scrutiny than the supermajors, further removing the assets sold and their emissions from public scrutiny. It is crucial to track and monitor the emissions attributable to fossil fuel assets even after they are sold.
This report assesses the regulatory landscape governing the corporate disclosure of fossil fuel asset sales, outlines the scale of fossil fuel asset sales by the supermajors, and proposes regulatory reforms to enhance transparency around fossil fuel asset sales by oil and gas companies
Status Report on Principles of International and Human Rights Law Relevant to Climate Change
Get PDFThe report aims to provide high-level guidance on the legal issues to be analyzed by the ICJ on the advisory opinion request on climate change. The status report addresses (i) advisory proceedings before the ICJ, including the Court’s jurisdiction and procedure (Section II), and (ii) key legal principles relevant to the request for an advisory opinion, including principles of international environmental law and international human rights law (Section III). The report identified, in a non-exhaustive manner, key relevant principles of international environmental law, key relevant principles of international human rights law, and issues of intergenerational equities that apply to the questions posed to the ICJ. The status report is part of the Youth Climate Justice Handbook, organized by the World’s Youth for Climate Justice and the Pacific Students Fighting Climate Change. The Handbook, which will be launched in early May, consists of three parts: (1) The Summary for Policymakers, (2) The Legal Memorandum, and (3) the Status Report
Passive Exit
Get PDFIn recent years, securities lending — making shares available for borrowing by short sellers who “sell first and buy later” — has been an object of increasing regulatory attention. Securities lending is linked to the growth of passive investing because large, buy-and-hold passive investors are among the largest lenders of portfolio securities. But relatively little is understood about the relationship between securities lending and passive investing. In this Article, I show how securities lending allows passive investors to generate revenue from a decline in the value of their investment portfolios in addition to borrowing fees determined by demand from the market. I find that when an active mutual fund exits a portfolio firm, passive index funds belonging to the same fund family raise the cost of borrowing the firm’s shares for short selling. To identify these supply-side shifts, I exploit changes in the identity of active managers which are likely to be uncorrelated with information that would otherwise drive within-portfolio variation in share lending costs. I find that the exercise of market power is pronounced in value lending programs targeting hard-to-borrow securities. Share lenders with market power capture most of the surplus arising from price declines
Expert Insights on Best Practices for Community Benefits Agreements
Get PDFThis report outlines 35 recommendations for developers and host communities when negotiating and drafting Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) for direct air capture hubs and other clean energy projects. These recommendations come from interviews with attorneys and other experts who have collectively negotiated dozens of CBAs for climate infrastructure and other types of projects
Twilight Issues in International Arbitration: Latent Choice of Law Challenges
No full textTwilight Issues in International Arbitration brings together the most frequently recurring issues of arbitral practice and procedure that arbitral tribunals regularly confront. There are many issues of arbitral practice that remain largely unaddressed, or poorly addressed, in the sources to which tribunals and counsel conventionally turn for procedural guidance: the arbitration agreement, the lex arbitri, and rules of procedure. Such “twilight” issues under consideration are the ones for which a tribunal finds little guidance in the parties’ arbitration agreement, the arbitration law of the seat, or even the procedural rules the parties may have adopted.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1367/thumbnail.jp
A Legacy of Discrimination: The Essential Constitutionality of Affirmative Action
No full textA timely defense of affirmative action policies that offers a more nuanced understanding of how centuries of invidious racism, discrimination, and segregation in the United States led to and justifies such policies from both a moral and constitutional perspective.
Since 1961, the issue of affirmative action has been a hotly contested legal and political issue. Intended to address our nation\u27s often horrifying discrimination against Black Americans and other minorities, affirmative action has led over the past sixty years to far greater minority representation across a vast range of industries, government positions, and academic institutions. Nonetheless, affirmative action policies in the United States continue to fall under assault.
In A Legacy of Discrimination, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, two of America\u27s leading constitutional scholars, trace the policy\u27s history and the legal challenges it has faced over the decades. They argue that in order to fully comprehend affirmative action\u27s original intent and impact, we must re-acquaint ourselves with the era in which it arose, beginning with the most important Supreme Court decision of the 20th century, 1954\u27s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Assessing this history, Bollinger and Stone introduce subsequent, and evolving, affirmative-action case law that had the intent and effect of constraining social, educational, and economic progress for Black people and other minority groups. They demonstrate how and why affirmative action policies stand on firm legal ground and must remain protected. Further, they explain why Americans must view affirmative action as a long-term moral commitment to secure justice, especially for Black Americans, after three and a half centuries of grave injustice that violates the most essential aspirations of our nation.
A timely and robust overview of the history of our nation\u27s historical and continuing racial discrimination and of the advent of affirmative action as a critical means to address this history, this book will serve as a powerful defense of a policy that has accomplished more than most people realize in making America a fairer and more inclusive country.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1365/thumbnail.jp
Modelling Climate Litigation Risk for (Re)Insurers
Get PDFIn response to the growing threat of climate change, the insurance industry has made significant investments in modelling and quantifying physical climate risks. However, the emerging risk of climate litigation has proven particularly difficult to model. In 2015 Mark Carney, then-Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board, warned that climate litigation poses “long-tail risks” for insurers that may be “significant, uncertain and non-linear.” Since that warning, the number of climate-related cases has more than doubled, and the scope and financial significance of climate litigation has become increasingly clear. However, insurers and regulators still struggle to identify and quantify exposure to climate litigation risk.
Modelling Climate Litigation Risk for (Re)Insurers assembles a toolkit to help academics, attorneys, insurance practitioners, and industry regulators model (re)insurer climate litigation risk. Section 2 of this report discusses the categories of climate litigation, and creates a definition of “climate litigation risk” tailored towards (re)insurer risk evaluation. Using this definition, Section 3 next systematically categorizes the risks, commercial opportunities, and operational flexibility that climate litigation presents to (re)insurers. Section 4 then discusses qualitative and quantitative techniques used to model these climate litigation risks, and outlines a simple climate litigation risk model for (re)insurers. Finally, annexes to this report (1) review regulations that require companies to assess and disclose their exposure to climate litigation; (2) outline key academic, industry, and government resources that discuss climate litigation risks and opportunities for insurers; and (3) highlight global climate litigation of particular significance to (re)insurers
Antitrust and Sustainability: A Landscape Analysis
Get PDFCompetition policy and antitrust law are experiencing a global renaissance. New market realities such as digital market gatekeepers, the financialization of firms, highly concentrated markets, a rising labor movement, industrial policy, and trade wars, among others, are radically reshaping how this policy area is understood and applied.
Sustainability concerns have also been a driving force for reconstituting antitrust to meet twenty-first century challenges. It is now widely accepted that competition policy – both its aims and its enforcement – has wider societal impacts beyond competition, including effects on democracy, economic inequality, growth and innovation, racial and gender imbalances, privacy, geopolitical implications and more. Its effects on the environment can also no longer be ignored
The NIH-Moderna Vaccine: Public Science, Private Profit, and Lessons for the Future
Get PDFThis commentary highlights the scientific history of the NIH-Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and corroborates Sarpatwari’s theme of private capture of value created by the public. The commentary also identifies missteps by the Trump and Biden Administrations and offers policy recommendations: better contracts with and incentives for pharmaceutical manufacturers and a not-for-profit “public option” for pharmaceutical development