International and Comparative Law

Costs are among the issues that the critics of international arbitration allege to justify the need to reform it. However, cognitive illusions and unfounded intuition can wreak havoc without understanding the real state of play. The field of investment arbitration is fraught with challenges, as there are many deeply held beliefs while access to objective data to test assumptions is very limited.  

The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) was created following the Final Peace Agreement between the government of Colombia and the FARC-EP, adopted on November 24, 2016. The SJP has operated so far for a year and a half. This experience warrants taking stock of the achievements and challenges that have ensued.   

Intellectual property (IP) may not be the first thing one thinks of when one thinks of Cuba, so it may come as a surprise that Cuba has a relatively robust set of intellectual property regulations. Cuba’s long history of complying with IP treaties has resulted in a sophisticated legal approach to the protection of IP on the island. 

Practicing attorneys and judges from Central and South America traveled to American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) once again this summer for an interactive two-week seminar on the United States’ adversarial legal system. 

H.E. Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), addressed the International Law Commission on July 12, 2019 about the Court’s workload and activities. AUWCL Emeritus Dean and Professor of Law, Claudio Grossman, participated as member of the International Law Commission. 

The civil war that ensued the breakup of the former Yugoslavia has had a strong impact on the development of international criminal law since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It was hoped that the imposition of individual criminal responsibility would help overcome the trauma of the atrocities that had been committed and pave the way for reconciliation. enough. In fact, in spite of historic judgments against some of the responsible war criminals—most of them of the highest military and political ranks—ethnic tensions have soared in Bosnia-Herzegovina in recent years.