Course or Seminar Category: International Comparative and Transnational Law

U.S. Securities Regulation in Comparative Perspective

This seminar will provide an overview of U.S. securities regulation, with the goal of developing students’ understanding of the regulation of the U.S. capital markets from both a doctrinal and policy perspective, and understanding differences and similarities with Canadian market regulation and their respective regulatory structures and approaches.

Particular emphasis will be put on current regulatory issues, such as enforcement approaches, perspectives and initiatives and the relationship between securities law and corporate law. The Sarbanes-Oxley reforms of 2002; regulators’ responses to, and regulatory initiatives introduced in light of, the credit crisis in 2007-2008; concerns about the continuing global competitiveness of the U.S. securities markets; as well as the theme of increasing international cooperation and coordination in regulatory policy making will also be explored.

Topics to be covered include a history of American securities regulation; principles of materiality and on-going disclosure; the regulation of the public offering process; the prospectus system and exemptions from public offering requirements; mergers and acquisitions; the increasing role of shareholder activism, proxy battles and governance oversight; key players in the American enforcement environment; insider trading, manipulation and foreign corruption; debates over securities class actions under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 of the ’34 Act; ESG disclosure issues; new and emerging issues, such as cryptocurrency and the role of public markets; and international cooperation and derivatives. Reading materials will combine theory (law review articles, reports of blue-ribbon commissions) with practice (statutory materials applied to problems distributed in advance).

Legal Values: Artificial Intelligence (Discrmination & Surveillance)

This seminar will explore in depth the many ways in which modern computing systems — including the data they ingest, the decisions made by the folks who develop them, and their myriad and nearly ubiquitous applications — may enable, encourage, or prevent societal discrimination and surveillance capitalism of various types. Students will learn how algorithms and artificial intelligence (“AI”) systems work, how such algorithms and systems may provide differential treatment and/or outcomes for different populations, and how they may invade privacy and cause other harms to people. Students will also consider the potential legal/regulatory, technical, and social/policy interventions that could ameliorate the harms caused by such algorithms and systems and will weigh the advantages and disadvantaged of each.

At the end of the seminar, students should be able to (i) discuss with colleagues and others the positive and negative consequences of various current AI innovations, and (ii) suggest different approaches to address systemic bias and surveillance capitalism — including legal/regulatory or social/policy changes, as well as technical solutions — and explain why certain of these approaches might or might not work in specific circumstances.

Legal Values: Law in the Time of Catastrophe

COVID-19 was the first truly global pandemic of the 21st century. Governments, climate scientists, epidemiologists, and public health researchers have warned that the viral outbreak will affect the world in myriad unforeseen ways and similar outbreaks are likely to recur. All the while that we are overwhelmed by this historical malady, we must not forget the increasing frequency and intensity with which Canada and countries around the world have been struck by forest fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, food scarcity, and historic refugee flows out of conflict and disaster-ridden landscapes. These events are likely to worsen in the coming decades.

Climate change and disasters as umbrella categories are fundamentally problems of governance. But environmental law courses traditionally struggle to make room for them. This course aims to introduce upper year law students to the relationship between law and a range of future-facing global environmental crises that are often overlooked in law school curricula. The readings are designed to: (i) bring law students up to date on social science and humanities research surrounding disasters; and (ii) critically examine a variety of international legal regimes that currently attend to specific kinds of disasters such as pandemics and food scarcity.

As possible, we will pause to examine how these issues are being addressed within Canada, both in terms of the Canadian constitutional framework as well as the concerns of indigenous communities. Like any survey, this course is designed to introduce students to a wide swathe of knowledge about a new subject. As such, there are limits to how deeply we can explore the subject-matter for each week. However, students are encouraged to choose research projects that will allow them to study any of the areas explored in the course, or other related areas, in greater depth.

The seminar will prepare students to serve as law and policy experts on significant national and international environmental concerns that are going to be in high demand in the years to come. By the end of the course, students will be able to:

·understand the socio-scientific, political, and historical context of climate change and other ‘catastrophes’ broadly stated;
·apply these insights and techniques to evaluate the quality and impact of international (and domestic) legal regimes;
·critically analyze the content of official statements, news reports, and popular narratives about disasters and emergency regulation

Sample list of topics (subject to change)
·        Climate, climate change, and disasters (as global, legal and non-legal contexts)
·        Famine and food security
·        Pandemics and global public health
·        Armed conflict and environmental Degradation
·        Small islands and sea level rise
·        Climate refugees and internally displaced persons

Climate Change Law

As the global community grapples with the escalating impacts of climate change, the legal system has become a critical battleground for accountability and policy change. This course delves into the rapidly evolving domain of climate change law and litigation, examining the intersection of law, environmental science, and global governance. Participants will explore the legal and policy mechanisms and strategies employed to address climate change, the role of litigation in shaping environmental policy, and the influence of legal decisions on the behavior of governments and corporations.
The seminar has two thematic segments. First, it provides a general background on international climate change law, including the UNFCCC, Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement, as well as domestic efforts to implement those mechanisms in order to mitigate climate impacts. Second, it looks at the emergence of climate change litigation domestically and in other jurisdictions. Specifically, this seminar will cover cases related to criminal law power, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, and private law that have attempted to take governments and other institutional actors to account for their climate-related impacts.

Comparative Law: Indigenous Nation-Building and Inherent Jurisdiction

This seminar course is a review of Indigenous rights practice from the standpoint of Indigenous law, inherent jurisdiction and nationbuilding. The course will be an evolution from early Indigenous rights advocacy, to Aboriginal title and Modern treaty negotiations. The instruction will focus on the tools of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Indigenous perspective of the Covenant Chain and the Nation-to-Nation arrangements made through the Treaty at Niagara in 1764 to discuss such modern day concepts as Treaty Councils, Indigenous Rights / Inherent Rights and Self Determination Tables, and the drafting of complex and comprehensive coordination agreements and Treaties. Other topics will include Indigenous Protected and Conservation Areas and Legislative Reconciliation.

Comparative Law: International Tax in a Web 3.0 World

Web3 technologies such as Blockchain, Smart Contracts and the Metaverse have created a new frontier for legal professionals. In  particular, grappling with issues relating to conflict of laws and choice of jurisdiction have become a challenge for almost every area of law, including but not limited to: commercial law, securities, criminal law, anti-money laundering, estates and many others. Given the  interactions and transactions between individuals and businesses facilitated by Web3 technologies in various jurisdictions worldwide,  the issue of tax liability is often described as a “gray area” because of the confusion it causes with respect to income tax, excise tax and  estates tax.
Knowing the landscape makes this perceived gray area disappear.
Various levels of government cooperation have resulted in attempts to ameliorate the ambiguities created by the various transactions  which occur as a result of “borderless” technologies. International organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation  and Development, regional governmental organizations such as the European Union, as well as bilateral tax treaties and information  exchange agreements have created a patchwork of legislation which causes ambiguity with respect to how, when and which tax rules  are applied.
This course will explore the various rules and principles which govern the borderless world in which we now live, using various primary  and secondary sources, case studies and expert guest speakers from jurisdictions outside of Canada. The students will be evaluated on  group projects, discussions and a final research paper.  
Group projects will be focused on particular issues, fact patterns and case scenarios, while discussions will explore hypothetical and factual international tax matters which are currently at issue or which could potentially occur in the future.  

The majority of the course will be held in person on campus; however, one to two classes may be held in a Metaverse virtual  environment. No irregular or complicated technologies, like headsets, will be required to attend these courses aside from a computer  with internet access.

Law, Society & State: Policing and Discrimination in Multicultural Societies – Socio-Legal Perspectives

In the aftermath of the spectacles of police brutality and the global protests they inspired, racialized policing remains a pressing problem in multicultural societies. It defines the quality and limits of citizenship for racialized individuals, religious minorities, sexual and gender minorities, unhoused individuals, and people with mental health issues, among other communities. Against a legal failure to address this pressing problem, socio-legal studies have disrupted institutional assumptions about policing and inequality in criminal justice systems. This course leverages these insights to explore the epistemological challenge of proving discrimination and the harms it inflicts on communities along the lines of ethno-racial identity and indigeneity. The course has two central goals: (1) to understand the role of racialized policing and legal responses in perpetuating inequality within the criminal justice system, and (2) to explore the strengths and limitations of socio-legal studies in uncovering and explaining these issues.
To achieve these goals, we will bridge doctrinal analysis on the law and policing complex with socio-legal studies of policing and inequality, set against the background of identity studies and Critical Legal Theory. The first part of the class will present and explain the overlapping issues of racial profiling and police violence, using case studies on discriminatory policing against racialized and indigenous communities in Canada, the US, and other multicultural
societies. The second part will explore the epistemological problem of discriminatory policing: the burden faced by racialized communities to prove the harms they face, as a matter of law and in the public sphere. In the third part, we will focus on the role of socio-legal studies in closing the gap between current jurisprudence and the realities of discrimination, discussing various methods, from surveys and quantitative analysis to in-depth interviews, ethnographies and mixed methods. We will examine works that focus on different figures involved in the dynamics of racialized policing and inequality more broadly, from affected communities to street cops, and all the way to legal
actors such as defense attorneys and judges. Through the contributions of these literatures, we will aim to map a path toward transformation.

Comparative Law: Regional Economic Integration in Africa

Africa’s regional economic communities (RECs) have grown exponentially in the last few decades. These RECs include the East African Community, the Economic Community of West African States, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. This course examines the legal framework within which regional economic integration is pursued in Africa through the RECs. Particular emphasis will be placed on the evolution of multiple RECs in Africa and the complex conflict of laws and jurisdictional questions they raise; decision-making and law-making within the RECs; the relationship between the laws of the regional economic communities and those of the member states; the jurisdiction and jurisprudence of the courts of the RECs and the enforcement of their judgments; the role of individuals and civil society within the RECs; and the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which is now being implemented to create the African Continental Free Trade Area. Students will develop competence and facility over several treatises on African regional integration. Students will sharpen their analytical, reasoning and critical reading skills.

International Human Rights Law

This seminar is organized into three modules. The first will provide a foundational background that includes an overview of the history, key concepts, and the underlying international law framework of the international human rights law (IHRL) system. The second module will deliver the substantive core of the seminar’s subject matter and include an introduction to major institutions and processes of the system, an overview of some core doctrine and debates related to a selection of protected human rights (e.g. those related to life, health, freedom from torture, non-discrimination), engagement with certain general concepts and debates about individual rights as well as the system as a whole (including criticisms and controversies), and the various ways in which international human rights law can be used as a legal advocacy tool within the domestic system. The third and final module will examine selected current topics in IHRL, including a review of closely related fields of international law such as international criminal law, international humanitarian law, international refugee law, and indigenous peoples’ rights.
 
The IHRL system is vast, and the goal of the course is not to provide a comprehensive doctrinal understanding of the entire field. Rather, the objective is for students to come away with a basic familiarity with the fundamental architecture of the system, the resources with which to navigate it, and knowledge of the ways in which international human rights law can be used to inform and support human rights advocacy under domestic legal systems. In addition, through the requirement of a major paper, each student will gain more focused knowledge of a specialized topic of the student’s choice.

Student learning will take place by completion of assigned readings, online posting of brief comments by students, and discussion in class, combined with the preparation of a major research paper.

The class meets once a week in a 3-hour time slot. Guests may on occasion be beamed into the class using a classroom internet connection; certain classes may be scheduled to be fully remote on Zoom where a guest or guests cannot attend in person.

Chinese Law

Lawyers, whether working in business, regulation, policymaking, or advocacy, are increasingly likely to come into contact with issues related to China over the course of their careers.  Recent tensions, for example involving Huawei Technologies, trade bans on key exports, and the fight against COVID-19 are straining the Canada-China bilateral relationship.  This course serves as a foundation for such encounters and aims to expose students to more of what lawyering involves in such contexts.  It is an introductory course that addresses how aspects of the Chinese legal system shape China-Canada relations and inform the contemporary practice of law in Canada.  

In addition to being of interest to students who would like to learn more about China and Canada-China relations, the class is also relevant for students interested in international relations and the practice of law in the global context.

The course will begin with an overview of Canada-China legal relations and China’s contemporary legal system.  It will then examine the political, economic and social environment within which the Chinese legal system operates.  Topics covered will include recent diplomatic disputes and their implications for bilateral relations; foreign investor ownership of residential real estate in Canada; cooperation on global issues in areas such as climate change, health and safety (including COVID-19), Arctic sovereignty and food security; gender equality, including sex work and human trafficking; trade and competition issues; key debates in criminal law, including extradition; and current tensions between Hong Kong and mainland China.

Course materials will include readings (all available for download through Moodle), documentaries, and guest speakers with experience working in the sphere of Canada-China relations (via zoom).  

No prior knowledge of China or Chinese is required or expected for this course.
 
Please do not hesitate to reach out to the instructor (MBoittin@osgoode.yorku.ca) for any questions on the course.