Foohey joined Georgia Law faculty as a full professor in 2024. She currently holds the Allen Post Professorship and teaches Bankruptcy, Secured Transactions and a Bankruptcy Practice Seminar. Specializing in bankruptcy, commercial law, consumer finance and business law, Foohey’s scholarship primarily involves empirical studies of bankruptcy and related parts of the legal system. She presently is a co-investigator on the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, a long-term research project studying persons who file bankruptcy. Data from this project serve as the basis of her co-authored book Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy, University of California Press (Aug. 5, 2025). Her work in business bankruptcy focuses on nonprofit entities, with a particular emphasis on how religious organizations use bankruptcy. Data from this project are included in her in-progress book Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive, forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press.
The University of Georgia School of Law’s spring 2025 International Law Colloquium recently hosted Temple Law’s Trang (Mae) Nguyen, who presented her working paper, “Goods’ Nationalities.” Pamela Foohey, Allen Post Professor of Law at Georgia Law, served as Nguyen’s faculty discussant.
Nguyen is an Associate Professor of Law at the Temple University Beasley School of Law and is an Affiliated Scholar at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at the New York University School of Law. Her research focuses on business law, contracts, transnational law, and international law. Nguyen also previously held research appointments at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, the National University of Singapore Centre for Asian Legal Studies, and the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law.
Below is an abstract of Nguyen’s working paper:
Products’ nationalities are at the center of today’s fast-changing global order. The Trump administration’s liberal use of tariffs against friends and foes, sanctions against Russian products, the banning of Chinese goods, and efforts to revitalize American manufacturing, to name just a few, all hinge on classifications of where a product is deemed “from.” But in today’s globalized economy, what exactly makes something “American” or “Chinese” or of any other nationality, for that matter?
This Article reexamines how goods acquire their designated nationalities at a time when such designation matters well beyond traditional commerce. It advances two main arguments. First, a product’s nationality is not fixed; rather, it is malleable and can vary depending upon the substantive legal regime under which the good is regulated—once predominantly trade law but now increasingly through a trade-security nexus and a trade-human rights nexus. Second, such malleability occurs through what I call an “attribute selection” process. In effect, each legal regime pivots the nationality analysis on certain “attributes” of a product, swapping and switching them as befit underlying interests and policy goals. The construction of product nationality thus occurs through mapping two separate sets of variables: first, the bundle of attributes of a product, and second, the “prisms” through which laws place significance on these attributes.
This Article makes several contributions. First, descriptively, it charts an updated account on product nationality’s expanded use, particularly in trade law’s nexus with national security and human rights. Second, conceptually, building on this updated descriptive account, it advances a novel framework—the attribute selection process—to unpack the making of product nationality. Third, normatively, it underscores how the need to use product nationality as proxy fits uneasily with the reality of global production, and how efforts to move away from nationality-based rules are likely vulnerable to similar challenges. Ultimately, while the Article makes clear that the concept of nationality is doing heavy lifting across various legal fields, it does not take a strong normative stand, opting instead to explain why taking a strong normative position is premature during fast evolving developments. Finally, the Article offers some practical considerations for policymakers, businesses, and other stakeholders as they consider product-nationality regulations going forward.
This year, Professor Desirée LeClercq is overseeing the colloquium, which is designed to introduce students to features of international economic law through engagement with scholars in the international legal field. To view the full list of International Law Colloquium speakers, visit our website.
This program is made possible through the Kirbo Trust Endowed Faculty Enhancement Fund and the Talmadge Law Faculty Fund.
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.
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