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Beyond Unprecedented S3 Ep3: Boardroom Ballot Battles and the Universal Proxy
Get PDFThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently adopted rules mandating the use of universal proxy cards for electing directors to the boards of public companies. Broadridge Financial Solutions Chief Legal Officer Keir Gumbs discusses the new rules and the potential repercussions of universal proxy card voting for investors and corporations.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented_3/1003/thumbnail.jp
The Sex Equality Gap: How the 20th Century Sex Equality Paradigm Continues to Leave Women of Color Behind
Get PDFThe United States has a sex equality problem that disproportionately impacts women of color. Despite the passage of sweeping federal, state, and local laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in employment, education, public benefits, housing, healthcare, voting, and in significant aspects of the U.S. economy and society, women — and particularly women of color — continue to experience persistent sex discrimination. These laws, starting with the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, make up what we call the 20th Century Sex Equality Paradigm.
At face value, such laws can be credited with having made considerable progress in dismantling stubborn forms of sex-based inequality for women. For instance, in 1960, women earned 60% of what men earned for the same or comparable work, and today that gap has been reduced to about 82%. Yet, a deeper examination of this data reveals a harsher truth: white women have been the primary beneficiaries of sex equality laws, leaving women of color significantly behind.
The policy brief examines this equality gap, demonstrating how the existing sex equality paradigm does not adequately account for the ways in which sex and race discrimination intersect with one another. In reality, an approach to combating sex discrimination that ignores or tacks on considerations of race discrimination disguises how the benefits of existing equality measures have been distributed in ways that center white women and further marginalize women of color. Thus, the implicit focus on the experiences of white women that is built into the current sex equality paradigm creates an equality gap that is itself a serious problem of gender-based injustice. The paper utilizes comparative data to measure the extent of sex-based inequality in society for women of color as compared with their white female counterparts
BU S3E1
No full textPhoto of Matt Levine, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering finance.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented_podcast/1034/thumbnail.jp
CRT2 S1E0
No full textPhoto of Kendall Thomas, Nash Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/crt2_podcast/1001/thumbnail.jp
CRT2 S1E3
No full textPhoto of Susan Sturm, George M. Jaffin Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/crt2_podcast/1010/thumbnail.jp
Copyright and Neighboring Rights Duration in Historical and Comparative Perspective
No full textThe issue of the duration of copyright has provoked controversy throughout the history of copyright law in both common law and civil law countries. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, famous (or notorious) court cases and heated parliamentary debates in England and France pitted partisans of lengthy – even perpetual – protection against advocates for a public domain of copyright-expired works. Durational limits mean that after a reasonable period, anyone should be free to exploit the fruits of others’ creative labors, whether in devising their own new works, or in broadly circulating the work in its original guise. The expirationi in 2024, of the copyright in “Steamboat Willie,” the precursor to Mickey Mouse, has renewed interest in the U.S. in the principle of a limited copyright term (“limited Times” in the U.S. constitution’s phrase). In Europe, the expiration of the copyright in St. Exupéry’s “The Little Prince,” in most countries in 2015 (70 years after the author’s death), but not in France until 2033 (due to wartime extensions), prompts a similar awareness of the temporal limits on the copyright term. In this study, we trace the history of copyright duration from the eighteenth century to the Berne Convention and later multilateral instruments, and to the U.S. adoption in 1976, of a copyright term consistent with Berne norms
Access to U.S. Discovery in International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration
Get PDFA provision of U.S. law — 28 U.S.C. section 1782 has for decades enabled litigants in foreign courts and international tribunals to avail themselves of U.S.-style discovery. Litigants and even so-called other interested parties have access to documentary and testimonial evidence even though the parties and dispute have no connection with the U.S. and such discovery is unavailable in the fora where the proceedings are pending. Use of this powerful evidence-gathering tool section 1782 in proceedings before foreign courts and international tribunals has become commonplace.
Among the most controversial issues in the U.S. law of international arbitration in recent years has been whether U.S. courts should make section 1782 discovery available for use in proceedings before international arbitral proceedings conducted abroad. For a long period U.S. courts and commentators have been deeply divided over the matter and awaited impatiently an authoritative ruling from the Supreme Court. That ruling has now come in the form of a pair of cases before the court: ZF Automotive US, Inc. v. Luxshare, Ltd. (an international commercial arbitration case) and AlixPartners, LLP, et al. v. Fund for Protection of Investors’ Rights in Foreign States (an international investor-State case). (For ease, reference below will be made to ZF Automotive only, unless AlixPartners is specifically implicated.) These rulings have dramatically altered the landscape. As of now, section 1782 discovery is categorically unavailable for use in international commercial arbitral proceedings and, except in extremely rare cases, in international investor-State disputes as well
Can Contract Emancipate? Contract Theory and The Law of Work
Get PDFContract and employment law have grown apart. Long ago, each side gave up on the other. In this Article, we re-unite them to the betterment of both. In brief, we demonstrate the emancipatory potential of contract for the law of work.
Today, the dominant contract theories assume a widget transaction between substantively equal parties. If this were an accurate description of what contract is, then contract law would be right to expel workers. Worker protections would indeed be better regulated by – and relegated to – employment and labor law. But contract law is not what contract theorists claim. Neither is contract law what the dominant employment theorists fear – a domain that necessarily misses the constitutive place of work in people’s life-plans and overlooks the systemic vulnerability of workers to their employers.
Contract, we contend, need not be work law’s canonical “other.” The first step is to see that contract, rightly understood, is an autonomy-enhancing device, one founded on the fundamental liberal commitment of reciprocal respect for self-determination. From this “choice theory” perspective, the presumed opposition between employment and contract law dissolves. We show that many employment law doctrines are not external to contract, but are instead entailed in liberal contract itself.
Grounding worker protections in contract theory has two positive effects. First, it offers workers more secure protection than reliance on momentary public law compromises. Second, it reveals contract’s emancipatory potential for all of us – not just as workers, but even as widget buyers. Contract can empower, and employment can show us the wa
Decommissioning Liability at the End of Offshore Oil and Gas: A Review of International Obligations, National Laws, and Contractual Approaches in Ten Jurisdictions
Get PDFOffshore oil and gas infrastructure faces an existential threat: the increasingly pressing need to address the climate emergency. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that GHG emissions from existing and planned fossil fuel infrastructure will push global warming past the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C threshold, and more detailed projections estimate that “nearly 60 per cent of oil and fossil methane gas ... must remain unextracted to keep within a 1.5 °C carbon budget.” The growing urgency of climate action, coupled with the increasing adoption of renewable energy systems and energy-efficient technologies, may strand thousands of offshore oil and gas installations across the globe.
This creates a risk for the public, because governments often sit as the “decommissioner of last resort. Most countries with significant offshore oil and gas resources have laws, regulations, and contracts that require private offshore oil companies to bear the cost of decommissioning their facilities. However, the legal and economic tools that states use to ensure that oil companies pay decommissioning expenses were often adopted without much, if any, consideration to climate change or the energy transition. As a result, a rapid phase-out of offshore oil and gas could cause a series of defaults and create immense financial burdens for governments of oil- and gas-producing jurisdictions.
This paper provides an overview of the statutory, regulatory, and contractual regimes governing offshore oil and gas decommissioning in ten countries, and identifies key financial and environmental risks that might arise in a “rapid phase-out” scenario presented by the energy transition. In doing so, it highlights areas in which these regimes may create risks in a rapid phase-out scenario involving the widespread cessation of offshore oil and gas activities. The first part of this paper provides a high-level overview of the legal and economic structures that govern offshore oil and gas decommissioning, highlights gaps and risks that are presented by a rapid phase-out scenario, and presents recommendations for policymakers, academics, and industry participants to reform decommissioning laws in the face of the climate-driven energy transition. The second part, Appendices 1 through 10, provides overviews of the laws, regulations, and contracts governing decommissioning in ten major oil- and gas-producing jurisdictions: Angola, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States
Energy Insecurity Mitigation: The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Other Low-Income Relief Programs in the US
Get PDFEnergy insecurity, defined as the “inability to meet basic household energy needs,” can be both a chronic and an acute problem. Chronic energy insecurity manifests as an inability to access or afford adequate supplies of energy, while acute energy insecurity arises when infrastructural, maintenance, environmental, or other external sources disrupt or impede access to energy. A substantial number of individuals and families across the United States experience energy insecurity, which can lead to a variety of adverse consequences including residential instability and poor health outcomes