Month: August 2024

Georgia Law welcomes four new professors, including two international law scholars

The University of Georgia School of Law is pleased to welcome four new professors this fall: Pamela Foohey, Assaf Harpaz, Desirée LeClercq, and Meighan Parker. Of the four, LeClercq and Harpaz are international law scholars who will contribute to Georgia Law’s ongoing tradition of excellence in international law that dates to 1940.

Desirée LeClercq, Assistant Professor of Law & Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center

LeClercq teaches International Trade and Workers Rights, International Labor Law, International Law and U.S. Labor Law. She serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center and as the faculty adviser for the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law. Specializing in international and labor law, LeClercq has recently published extensively in flagship and specialty law reviews, including the Fordham Law Review, the Virginia Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Economic Law, the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, the Administrative Law Review, the American University Law Review and the Berkeley Journal of International Law. Notably, her Columbia Journal of Transnational Law article titled “A Worker-Centered Trade Policy” won the ComplianceNet Outstanding Junior Publication Award. LeClercq has also contributed several book chapters on international trade and labor, and she is a frequent contributor to Fortune.

Previously she served as a director of labor affairs in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2016 to 2020, during which time she was an adjunct professor at the American University Washington College of Law. Additionally, LeClercq worked for nearly a decade as a legal officer at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and served as staff counsel for the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.

Assaf Harpaz, Assistant Professor of Law

Harpaz’s scholarly focus lies in international taxation, with an emphasis on the intersection of taxation and digitalization. He teaches classes in federal income tax and business taxation. He explores the tax challenges of the digital economy and the ways to adapt 20th-century tax laws to modern business practices. In addition, he researches the use of tax expenditures and the historical expansion and politicization of the tax expenditure budget in the U.S. federal income tax system.

His recent scholarship includes his international tax article published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law titled “International Tax Reform: Who Gets a Seat at the Table?” His work has also been published in Law and Contemporary Problems, the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Yale Journal of International Law and Tax Notes International. Moreover, he has contributed expert pieces for Newsweek, WalletHub, FinanceBuzz and the Maurer Global Forum.

Before joining UGA, Harpaz served as a visiting assistant professor at the Drexel University Kline School of Law teaching courses in federal income tax and enterprise tax.

Georgia Law Professor Assaf Harpaz presents at International Roundtable on Taxation and Tax Policy

University of Georgia School of Law professor Assaf Harpaz presented his draft paper “Global Tax Wars and the Shift to Source-Based Taxation” and chaired the “Jurisprudence and Enforcement” panel at the 8th International Roundtable On Taxation And Tax Policy during July.

Below is an abstract from the draft paper:

Current debates in international taxation frequently engage with the concept of global tax fairness, relating to the equitable allocation of taxing rights between jurisdictions. These questions emerge within an international tax framework at a critical juncture. In a rapidly evolving digital economy, intergovernmental organizations are battling to shape the cross-border tax agenda. Global North economies have dominated this regime through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has drawn backlash due to its undemocratic procedure and unfavorable outcomes for developing countries. Meanwhile, the United Nations has occupied a relatively peripheral role in global tax governance. However, its role could change with the establishment of a new Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation – an initiative overwhelmingly supported by the world’s developing countries.

The article conceptualizes the contemporary international tax discourse as “tax wars,” contrasting the taxing powers and interests of the OECD-led Global North with those of the UN-backed Global South. It explores the standards and preferences that have underpinned the regime since its inception, focusing on residence and source taxation. The article argues for a shift towards source-based taxation, drawing on procedural and distributive justice principles. To do so, the article proposes expanding the permanent establishment standard in model treaty language, creating an opportunity for broader taxation of business profits in the source country. This transition will address longstanding disparities and is increasingly warranted in a digital economy that does not rely on physical presence.

Assaf Harpaz joined University of Georgia School of Law as an assistant professor in summer 2024 and will teach classes in federal income tax and business taxation. Harpaz’s scholarly focus lies in international taxation, with an emphasis on the intersection of taxation and digitalization. He explores the tax challenges of the digital economy and the ways to adapt 20th-century tax laws to modern business practices.

Georgia Professor Greg Day publishes in the Cornell Law Review

Greg Day, Associate Professor of Legal Studies at the Terry College of Business and professor (by courtesy) at the University of Georgia School of Law, published “Antitrust for Immigrants” in the Cornell Law Review.

Below is an abstract from the draft paper:

Immigrants and undocumented people have often encountered discrimination because they compete against “native” businesses and workers, resulting in protests, boycotts, and even violence intended to exclude immigrants from markets. Key to this story is government’s ability to discriminate as well: it is indeed common for state and federal actors to enact protectionist laws and regulations meant to prevent immigrants from braiding hair, manicuring nails, operating food trucks, or otherwise competing. But antitrust courts have seldom mentioned a person’s immigration status, much less offered a remedy.

This Article shows that antitrust’s “consumer welfare” standard has curiously ignored the plight of immigrants. Part of the reason is that antitrust law is characterized as a “colorblind” regime benefitting consumers collectively, meaning that it isn’t supposed to prioritize insular groups such as immigrants. Courts and scholars have also described matters of inequality and discrimination as “social harms” existing beyond antitrust’s scope. In fact, antitrust lawsuits have successfully sought to drive immigrants out of markets, alleging that competitors gained an “unfair” advantage from employing undocumented workers. Under this view of antitrust law, the exclusion of immigrants is an appropriate way of promoting competition.

This Article argues that anti-immigrant discrimination creates the exact types of harms that antitrust was meant to remedy. Since excluding immigrants can misallocate resources on citizenship or racial lines as opposed to their most productive usages, certain acts of discrimination should entail “conduct without a legitimate business purpose,” even when based solely on racial animus. A hidden type of market power is revealed in that foreign-born people are less able to employ self-help remedies to correct market failures. In addition to analyzing antitrust’s purpose and economic foundation, this Article delves into antitrust’s history to show that an original function of competition law was to protect foreigners. By demonstrating how incumbents can inflict greater levels of harm on immigrants while wielding less market power, this Article reimagines the consumer welfare standard and its colorblind approach as well as reveals how marginalized communities defy antitrust’s assumptions of self-help remedies.

Greg Day is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies at the Terry College of Business and holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Law. He is also an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project as well as the University of North Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. His research has primarily focused on the intersection of competition, technology, innovation, and privacy as well as the disparate impact of anticompetitive conduct.

Georgia Law’s Emerging Scholars initiative, including internationalist Mary Yiyue Zhao, enters second year

The University of Georgia School of Law’s Emerging Scholars initiative brings accomplished practitioners to campus to hone their teaching and academic-writing skills during a two-year residency. In 2023, three Emerging Scholars began their residencies: Jill Benton (J.D.’99), Shanée Brown, and Mary Yiyue Zhao. Of the three scholars, Zhao’s scholarship and courses include international areas of focus.

Zhao will instruct in the areas of international intellectual property law and international business transactions. Her scholarship includes: “Morals in Place of Markets: Courts’ Approach to Post-Sale Confusion” forthcoming in the Rutgers Law Review, “Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform: Reconsidering the Multilateral Investment Court in the Context of Disputes Involving Intellectual Property” in the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts and “Transparency in International Commercial Arbitration: Adopting a Balanced Approach” in the Virginia Journal of International Law. 

Before entering academia, Zhao served as an associate for approximately five years at Covington & Burling, where she represented clients in commercial and intellectual property litigation. She was also a visitor at the Max Planck Institute Department of Ethics, Law and Politics during September 2018. 

During her time in law school, she worked at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law in Austria as a legal intern and at the International Law and Policy Institute in Norway as a research assistant. 

She earned her bachelor’s degree with highest honors from Cornell University in 2014 and both her law and master’s degrees from Stanford University in 2018.

Georgia Law Professor Bruner publishes chapter on fraud risk in the age of AI

University of Georgia School of Law professor Christopher M. Bruner published a chapter titled “Managing Fraud Risk in the Age of AI” in a book titled Fraud and Risk in Commercial Law (Hart 2024), edited by professor Paul S. Davies of University College London and professor Hans Tjio of the National University of Singapore (NUS).

The volume includes papers presented at a conference at NUS, described in a previous post.

Below is a description of the book:

This book focuses on contemporary problems related to fraud and risk in commercial law.

It has been said by some that we are in a ‘golden age of fraud’. In part this has been caused by globalisation, technological changes and the financialisation of business. This has resulted in the creation of automated linkages with integrated supply chains and the creation of systemic risks, which have been exacerbated by new forms of intangible assets like tokens and their ease of movement. While regulation has ebbed and flowed given the desire of governments to generate economic growth, as well as the distrust of their coercive powers, the courts have sought to strike a balance between considerations such as commercial certainty and fairness.

The book provides an analysis of key contemporary issues on the theme of fraud and risk in commercial law, including: technology and fraud, secondary liability and ‘failure to prevent’ economic crime, abuse of business entities, insolvency and creditor protection, injunctions and other orders, cross-border issues, the relationship between regulation and private law, and solutions for policy makers.

Christopher M. Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Georgia Law Professor Desirée LeClercq publishes chapter in Oxford University Press book

Assistant Professor Desirée LeClercq published “Enforcing International Sustainability Standards on International and National Platforms” in The Sustainability Revolution in International Trade Agreements (G. Vidigal and K. Claussen, eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Below is a description of the book:

Once seen as aspirational and relatively innocuous, ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’ provisions are now changing the face of international trade agreements. The Sustainability Revolution in International Trade Agreements gathers fundamental, first-hand analyses of these novel commitments across dozens of agreements, considering their legal, political, and economic aspects.

Drawing on perspectives from different parts of the world and engaging experts in the law and practice of sustainability provisions, this volume offers a comprehensive assessment of the latest developments and innovations in international trade agreements. It also evaluates the development challenges that sustainability requirements pose for countries with limited resources and capacity, for whom lower labour and environmental regulatory costs have been a competitive asset.

The present volume explores the intersectional aspects of sustainability – such as gender equality, biodiversity, animal welfare, and Indigenous rights – in addition to the more traditional dimensions of sustainability, namely economic development, environmental conservation, and improvement of labour standards.

There is little doubt that a sustainability revolution in global production patterns is needed. Considering the details of its operation – how it can come into being, who will bear the increased production costs, and how decisions on difficult trade-offs will be made – reveals the immense challenges involved in developing a new international law for sustainable trade. Read together, the chapters in this volume outline the contours this emerging legal framework, examine its practical operation, and offer important reflections upon the real extent and the foreseeable consequences of this sustainability revolution in international trade agreements.

Desirée LeClercq joined the University of Georgia School of Law in 2024 as an assistant professor. She teaches International Trade and Workers Rights, International Labor Law, International Law and U.S. Labor Law. She also serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center and as the faculty adviser for the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law.

Georgia Law Professor Clare Norins presents to U.S. State Department leadership program

Clinical Associate Professor & First Amendment Clinic Director Clare R. Norins presented on Georgia’s Open Meetings Act and Open Records Act to journalists from 17 countries participating in the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program during June.

The International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) is the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program. Through short-term visits to the United States, current and emerging foreign leaders in a variety of fields experience this country firsthand and cultivate lasting relationships with their American counterparts.

Clare R. Norins is a clinical associate professor and the inaugural director of the University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic, which represents clients in federal and state court on a range of First Amendment and media law issues. Representative matters include challenges to jail censorship, social media blocking by government officials, retaliatory arrest, defending the right to record, opposing unconstitutional permit requirements, and defamation defense/anti-SLAPP.

Georgia Law Professor Assaf Harpaz presents at Junior International Law Scholars Association Workshop

University of Georgia School of Law professor Assaf Harpaz workshopped “Global Tax Wars and the Shift to Source-Based Taxation” at the Junior International Law Scholars Association summer workshop during August.

Assaf Harpaz joined University of Georgia School of Law as an assistant professor in summer 2024 and will teach classes in federal income tax and business taxation. Harpaz’s scholarly focus lies in international taxation, with an emphasis on the intersection of taxation and digitalization. He explores the tax challenges of the digital economy and the ways to adapt 20th-century tax laws to modern business practices.