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Like Oil and Water: How the Guyana-Venezuela Border Dispute Impacts Foreign Oil Investors
Full text linkGuyana, a hidden gem located on the northern coast of South America, is an emergent nation primarily known as the land of many waters. However, in 2015, this hidden gem captured international attention when the country struck liquid gold: oil. The discovery put Guyana on the map as an attractive foreign investment opportunity, and over the last ten years, Guyana has gone from being one of the poorest nations in South America to the nation with the world’s fastest growing economy.
This economic boom, fueled by foreign oil companies, also caught the attention of Guyana’s neighboring country, Venezuela. On December 5, 2023, Venezuelan President Maduro asserted a territorial claim over approximately seventy-five percent of Guyana’s land and ordered all oil companies in the disputed region to leave. This territorial dispute poses a substantial threat to Guyana’s sovereignty and to foreign oil companies that have invested billions of dollars in the country.
The rights of foreign investors in Guyana are protected by the country’s Investment Act of 2004. However, many nations also engage in bilateral investment treaties to strengthen protections for foreign investors abroad. This Comment examines local investment laws and the 1989 Bilateral Investment Treaty between the United Kingdom and Guyana to determine the current protections afforded to foreign oil investors during the ongoing border dispute. It also offers recommendations that both secure investor rights and adequately protect Guyana’s natural resources
Death Before Breath: Courts Should Add De–Escalation and Proportionality to the \u3cem\u3eGraham\u3c/em\u3e Factors
No full textThis paper examines Barnes v. Felix, a case recently before the Supreme Court, through a comparative analysis of various circuit courts’ applications of the Graham factors in use–of–force evaluations. Beginning with a historical overview of policing, the paper revisits the factual background of the case before delving into the Fifth Circuit’s analysis, known as the Moment–of–Threat doctrine. It then contrasts this approach with the broader “totality of the circumstances” approach, highlighting the differing judicial interpretations. Building upon these established frameworks, the paper proposes two additional factors aimed at promoting human life and safety. By introducing these elements, the analysis seeks to enhance the evaluative criteria used in excessive force determinations, offering a more comprehensive and protective standard for future judicial review
TRIPs, World Trade, Social Progress, and the Public Interest
No full textThe Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement arrived in the 1990s amidst great fanfare for a suite of comprehensive reforms to a trading system that had failed the world time and again. It bore a title that sounded less like a pact on outsourcing or multinational corporatism and more like a fair trade pledge for products of the mind and the personality. TRIPs was introduced as a pillar of the New World Order, a post-Cold War vision in which the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of the Chinese economy would augur an era of harmonious commerce. The World Trade Organization stood ready to welcome China, Russia, and much of the Global South into an elite club run by the NATO/Japan trading network. For a moment, the optimism was contagious. Free trade would glide smoothly. Inventors’ and authors’ protections would click neatly into place. Tariffs and import restrictions would fade into memory. Nations would link arms in prosperous unity.
Three decades later, however, the sense of unity and shared purpose has dulled. China’s entry into the WTO did revolutionize the global economy, although perhaps it simply relocated major centers of collective activity. Now the world finds itself pausing to consider a troubling question: were the 1990s’ prophets of lopsided trade, lost jobs, and unfairness onto something?
The official story celebrates TRIPs for reducing legal uncertainty, harmonizing IP laws, speeding up trade, and fostering mutually beneficial relationships. Yet behind this inspiring tale lies a disclaimer or hidden clause that the brochure forgot to print. Every celebrated benefit comes with a cost disguised as something else. Job displacement spread in slow motion. Employment growth sagged, by the standards of recent history, as if climbing through molasses. Living standards moved backwards in many places. Inflation surged alongside imports tonnage. Access to life-saving medicines and new technologies was narrowed, in ways, for millions of people. Human rights and public health could be compromised in the name of a value, “trade.”
TRIPs may be a success, but only in a somewhat restrictive sense, the kind of fine print that takes a lot of the joy out of a seeming bargain. It formalized a system that served robust economies more faithfully than substantial sectors of the United States (U.S.) public. Its promise of innovation often meant higher barriers and tighter controls, justified as property rights. Its anticipated efficiencies often required telling local industries to fend for themselves, or even dissolve
Imposing Restrictions on the First Step Act’s Retroactive Application to Vacated Sentences
Full text linkThe First Step Act has been called “the most significant criminal justice reform bill in a generation.” Until recently, the Eleventh Circuit had not weighed in on whether Section 403 of the First Step Act’s sentencing reforms applies to defendants whose initial sentences were vacated and who face resentencing after the Act’s enactment. On July 2, 2024, the Supreme Court agreed to squarely consider this issue, despite the Department of Justice siding with defendants yet calling the issue “shallow.” On July 8, 2024, the Eleventh Circuit held these defendants are not entitled to the benefits of the First Step Act despite four of its sister circuits holding the opposite. Ultimately, the resolution of the circuit split explored by this Article reconsiders issues of statutory interpretation, lenity, vacatur, and clear congressional intent to benefit offenders serving long mandatory minimums.
Accordingly, this Article examines the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in United States v. Hernandez and, following Justice Gorsuch’s lead, advocates that district and appellate courts should look more closely at ambiguity. Under the current regime, courts are swift to state that the statutory analysis should end with the text, even where reasonable minds differ about the meaning behind it. With Justice Gorsuch’s originalist understanding of the rule of lenity, this Article argues that the First Step Act provides an opportunity to reexamine the assumption of unambiguity and the function of the rule of lenity in the face of clear congressional intent. This Article concludes that, should the Supreme Court follow Justice Gorsuch’s reasoning, the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Hernandez may be abrogated
Locating Consumer Financial Regulation
Full text linkRecent advances in data-driven technology in consumer financial markets, commonly referred to as fintech, have resurfaced the question of whether and to what extent data, particularly consumers\u27 personal data, should be a locus for regulatory intervention in these markets. While innovation in fintech and the accompanying increase in the processing of personal data offer to improve the functioning of consumer financial markets, like all advances in technology, they also come with costs and risks. In 2024, in a move that favored the regulation of personal financial data per se and many of the traditional features of personal data protection regulation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or the Bureau ) issued a new Personal Financial Data Rights Rule. The Rule seeks to mitigate the costs and risks of fintech and capture its benefits, specifically due to Open Banking, a fast-growing digital network that enables consumers to transfer their personal financial data between financial institutions.
As fintech innovation advances and the Bureau looks to personal data protection regulation as a model for regulating consumer fintech markets, this Article sounds a note of caution. As theory predicts and empirical evidence corroborates, despite its intuitive appeal, there are clear limits to the effectiveness of personal data protection regulation. The problem is not only the limitations of the traditional, mostly procedural and contractarian approach of personal data protection regulation, but also, more conceptually, the limitations of personal data per se as a locus for balancing the costs and benefits, and opportunities and risks, of data-driven innovation. This is increasingly true in a world of big data and sophisticated artificial intelligence systems.
Coming from a position of pragmatism, and using consumer credit markets as a case study, this Article cautions against overreliance on the logic and traditional features of personal data protection regulation in consumer fintech markets. Regulators should not rely too heavily on traditional features such as categorical ex ante limits on the flow of consumer data, high-level principles such as data minimization, or individual data processing rights such as consent and data deletion that require consumers to self-police and prevent harm. Rather, regulators should seek to facilitate the secure flow of consumer data in consumer fintech markets, while carefully controlling, through product, conduct, and prudential, regulation, how firms use and apply that data in the design and sale of digital consumer financial products and services. Thus, data use, rather than data flow, becomes the more meaningful locus for mitigating the costs and risks and capturing the benefits and opportunities of fintech innovation.
In making this argument, this Article also advocates for a more consequentialist approach to consumer financial privacy, whereby the benefits to some consumers resulting from the use of their data-such as access to more affordable credit-can be balanced against, and conceivably outweigh, any intrinsic harms due to the collection and transmission of personal data per se, or consequential harms to other consumers due to harmful uses of that data-such as higher cost, less affordable credit. Relatedly, this Article advocates for the greater pursuit of substantive fairness- more favorable substantive outcomes for consumers due to the use of their data- and not only procedural fairness in digital consumer financial markets. This Article\u27s conclusions could have broader implications for the methods and limits of personal data regulation in other digital consumer markets not limited to consumer fintech markets
From Fairy Tales to Fascist Nightmares: Countering Ron DeSantis’ Florida
No full textThe recent spate of anti–‘woke’, don’t say gay, anti–trans, and anti–immigrant legislation, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, puts the sunshine state in the unenviable position of serving as the nation’s test case for Republicans’ neofascist agendas. This paper explores the exclusionary, targeting, and banning aspects of these culture war assaults on public education and outgroups. The specific banning of Critical Race Theory is discussed alongside cis–heteronormative efforts to target queer and trans communities, as well as DeSantis’ executive memoranda of transporting those at the border to sanctuary cities and S.B. 1718 aimed at excluding immigrant communities from public life and pathways to citizenship. Overall, we will discuss the constitutional challenges to Florida Republicans’ legislative agenda of hate and lawsuits, grassroots mobilizations, potential coalitional politics, and other responses to Florida’s neofascist creep
Eyes Everywhere: Unpacking the Digital Surveillance State in Mexico and the Legal Blind Spots
No full textThis article examines the rise of digital surveillance in Mexico and its implications for privacy, human rights, and democratic governance. Despite constitutional and legislative protections guaranteeing personal privacy and freedom of expression, Mexico has developed one of the most extensive surveillance systems in the Americas. Through tools such as Pegasus spyware and the C5 urban surveillance network, government agencies have expanded their monitoring capabilities, often under the guise of national security. However, the misuse of these technologies against journalists, activists, and political dissidents reveals legal and institutional deficiencies. The article analyzes the evolution of Mexico’s digital surveillance infrastructure, identifies the loopholes in existing laws such as the Federal Law on the Protection of Personal Data and the General Law for the Protection of Personal Data in Possession of Obliged Subjects, and evaluates the weakened role of oversight institutions like the INAI. The article argues for comprehensive legal reforms, judicial oversight, and greater transparency