Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Global health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

A Market in Litigation Risk

Abstract: Why do people hate litigation? Corporate America, in particular, complains that litigation is too expensive, time consuming, and unpredictable. But these are not distinguishing features of litigation. When a company launches a new product or enters into a new business line, it may face a process that is just as expensive, time consuming, and risky as litigation. The company will invest time and money in product development and market research and will bear the risk that the product ultimately will fail and its efforts will result in a loss. What makes litigation seem so daunting, and distinguishes litigation risk from most other risks, is that litigants lack a mechanism to dispose of litigation risk. Virtually any other risk that a business faces can be spread or eliminated via the market. If a new business line is too costly or risky for a company to pursue on its own, it can find a larger partner and undertake a joint venture, or it can raise capital for the project through public or private markets, in the form of debt or equity. Moreover, companies not only spread business risks through the capital markets, but also dispose of some risks that they simply do not want to bear at all. An airline that does not want its annual profits to turn on fluctuations in oil prices can use hedge contracts to offload that risk to someone else. So too can a farmer offload risk through the futures markets and insurance policies and make sure that his annual income does not turn on fluctuations in crop prices or on a catastrophic fire. When it comes to litigation risk, however, a company that is sued generally is stuck with the risk. Insurance companies do not sell after-the-event insurance policies for lawsuits that already have been filed and there isn’t a market in which litigants can trade away litigation risk. Neither the legal profession, the insurance industry, nor the capital markets has yet found a way to relieve litigants of risk. This Article highlights the costs of this failure of risk management and seeks to develop a mechanism to relieve litigants of litigation risk. Moreover, in developing a new market for legal risk, the Article sketches out a new role for lawyers as market participants. Instead of working for clients with legal problems, some lawyers might work for investment funds, investment banks, or insurers that invest in, and profit from, legal risk. Indeed, upon departing from their traditional role as agents for risk-bearing clients, lawyers might even use their skills to trade in legal risk for their own account—as principals, rather than agents. Lawyers can benefit litigants and society not only by serving clients, but also by making markets in legal risk.

Justice on the Ground: Can International Criminal Courts Strengthen Domestic Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Societies?

Abstract: The author examines how developments in international criminal law — including creation of the International Criminal Court and various hybrid tribunals — can have an impact on rule-of-law building efforts in post-conflict societies. Although trials of atrocity perpetrators primarily and appropriately focus on fairly trying the accused individuals, these processes also have a wider impact on public perceptions of justice and potentially can influence a society’s ability to embrace rule of law norms. The quality of outreach and capacity-building accompanying these trials may well have a decisive effect on whether these proceedings, on balance, strengthen or undermine public confidence in justice and justice institutions in societies recovering from atrocities. This piece stresses the need to supplement international and hybrid criminal trials with more meaningful outreach to the affected populations, and with more systematic domestic capacity-building and empowerment aimed at both formal justice systems and civil society.

Virus Sharing, Genetic Sequencing, and Global Health Security

Abstract: This Perspective focuses on the future of the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework, which was initially established to promote the fair sharing of public health–related pandemic influenza samples between countries. We examine the changes that need to be made to address the growing likelihood that genetic sequence data might be shared instead of physical virus samples, as well as the need to expand the PIP framework’s scope and to improve its fairness.

The Battle Over Taxing Offshore Accounts

Abstract: The international tax system is in the midst of a contest between automatic information reporting and anonymous withholding models for ensuring that nations have the ability to tax offshore accounts. At stake is the extent of many countries’ capacity to tax investment income of individuals and profits of closely held businesses through an income tax in an increasingly financially integrated world.Incongruent initiatives of the European Union, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Switzerland, and the United States together represent an emerging international regime in which financial institutions act to facilitate countries’ ability to tax their residents’ offshore accounts. The growing consensus that financial institutions should act as cross-border tax intermediaries represents a remarkable shift in international norms that has yet to be recognized in the academic literature.The debate, however, is about how financial institutions should serve as cross-border tax intermediaries, and for which countries. Different outcomes in this contest portend starkly different futures for the extent of cross-border tax administrative assistance available to most countries. The triumph of an automatic information reporting model over an anonymous withholding model is key to (1) allowing for the taxation of principal, (2) ensuring that most countries are included in the benefit of financial institutions serving as cross-border tax intermediaries, (3) encouraging taxpayer engagement with the polity, and (4) supporting sovereign policy flexibility, especially in emerging and developing economies. This Article closes with proposals to help reconcile the emerging automatic information exchange approaches to produce an effective multilateral system.