The United States acquired its first overseas territory—the island of Navassa, near Haiti—by conceptualizing it as a kind of property to be owned, rather than a piece of sovereign territory to be governed. The story of Navassa shows how competing conceptions of property and sovereignty are an important and underappreciated part of the history of the law of the territories—a story that continued 50 years later in the Insular Cases, which described Puerto Rico as “belonging to” but not “part of” the United States. Modern scholars are drawn to the sovereignty framework and the public-law tools that come along with it: arguments about rights, citizenship, and self-determination. But the property framework, and accompanying private-law tools, can also play an important role in understanding and dismantling the existing colonial structure.
This Essay expounds on the outsized role of private law in governing ownership of new technologies and data. As scholars lament gaps between law and...
Assessing the legitimacy of any legal system is hard, but especially if the system in question is the volatile and contested field of international...
The Supreme Court has overruled Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, finally interring a doctrine of statutory interpretation that it had...
The use of autonomy to initiate force, which states may begin to view as necessary to protect against hypersonic attacks and other forms of ‘hyperwar...
After two years of debate in Congress and the broader world over forfeiting the frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank for the benefit of Ukraine...
There have been many many, many proposals to use Russia’s frozen assets to help Ukraine. Russia’s invasion violated international law; reparations are...
Countries hit by unexpected crises often look to their overseas diasporas for assistance. Some countries have tapped into this generosity of their...
The view that international law functions independently of municipal law (hermetically), does not reflect contemporary international practice. Instead...
A leading casebook on foreign relations law, authored by widely cited scholars who also have pertinent government experience, Foreign Relations Law...
En række amerikanske præsidentkandidater og kongresmedlemmer er i de sidste år begyndt at argumentere for, at USA burde lancere militære angreb mod...
This provocative portrayal of the background to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine emphasizes the broad patterns of history that shape the present. Authored...
Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But...
The Supreme Court’s recent expansion of the major questions doctrine has rocked administrative law, throwing into doubt executive agencies’ statutory...
National constitutions codify provisions on a wide range of topics, ranging from presidential term limits to the country’s flag. But are all...
In an era defined by partisan rifts and government gridlock, many celebrate the rare issues that prompt bipartisan consensus. But extreme consensus...
The concept of territoriality does not appear to fit very well with the limits on state power in admiralty. Territoriality refers to land while...
In this article, we examine the relations between risk, the choice of foreign or local contract terms (parameters), and maturity in the sovereign debt...
Both theorists and courts commonly assume that high-dollar financial contracts between sophisticated parties are free of linguistic errors...