investment law thesis

Van de Beeten, Jacob (2024) In the name of the law: a critique of the systemic rationality in EU law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Agnihotri, Shree (2024) Arendtian constitutional theory: an examination of active citizenship in democratic constitutional orders. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Misra, Tanmay (2023) The invention of corruption: India and the License Raj. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Garcés de Marcilla Musté, Mireia (2023) Designing, fixing and mutilating the vulva: exploring the meanings of vulval cutting. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Nolan, Katherine Anne (2023) The individual in EU data protection law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Classmann, Stephanie (2023) What we do to each other: criminal law for political realists. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Schonberg, Morris (2022) The notion of selective advantage in EU State aid law – an equality of opportunity approach. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Akbari, Sina (2022) Normative dimensions of the practice of private law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Stipanovich, Aleksandra (2022) Environmental assessment of trade: origins and critiques of effectiveness. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Pinto, Mattia (2022) Human rights as sources of penality. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Girard, Raphaël (2022) Populism, law and the courts: space and time in an age of "constitutional impatience". PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Matabudul, Rachna (2022) Tax treaty dispute resolution: lessons from the law of the sea. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Taggart, John (2022) Examining the role of the intermediary in the criminal justice system. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Goh, Benjamin (2022) The literary unconscious: rereading authorship and copyright with Kant's ‘on the wrongfulness of reprinting’ (1785). PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Uberti, Francesca (2022) Vaccine opposition in the information age: a study on online activism and DIY citizenship. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Gafni, Ilan (2022) Rethinking the negligence liability of public authorities in English law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Claeys, Irene (2021) The construction of a regulatory risk device: an examination of the historical emergence and performative effects of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s market risk framework. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sonin, Joanne F. (2021) The evolution of the shareholder: legal change, deflection, and constancy. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Damianos, Alexander (2021) Ratifying the Anthropocene: a study of the Anthropocene working group’s ongoing effort to formalize the Anthropocene as a unit of the geologic time scale. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Fisher, Jonathan Simon (2021) Mandatory self-reporting of criminal conduct by a company: corporate rights and engaging the privilege against self-incrimination. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Gupta, Priya S. (2020) Leveraging the city: urban governance in financial capitalism. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Musto, Callum (2020) States’ regulatory powers and the turn to public law in international investment law and arbitration. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ahdash, Fatima (2020) Examining the interaction between family law and counter-terrorism in the UK in recent years. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Common, MacKenzie F. (2020) Rule of law and human rights issues in social media content moderation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Clark, Martin (2020) The 'international' and 'domestic' in British legal thought from Gentili to Lauterpacht. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mukherjee, Sroyon (2019) Context-driven choices: environmental valuation in the courtroom. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Teeder, Wendy Mary (2019) Judicial review and the vanishing trial. MPhil thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ganguly, Geetanjali (2019) Towards a transnational law of climate change: transnational litigation at the boundaries of science and law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Myslinska, Dagmar Rita (2019) Not quite white: the gap between EU rhetoric and the experience of Poles’ mobility to the UK. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zlatev, Zlatin Mitkov (2019) Approaches towards the concept of non-pecuniary losses deriving from breach of contract. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Tundawala, Moiz (2018) In the shadow of swaraj: constituent power and the Indian political. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lima Sakr, Rafael (2018) Law and lawyers in the making of regional trade regimes: the rise and fall of legal doctrines on the international trade law and governance of South-North regionalism. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Stones, Ryan R. (2018) EU competition law and the rule of law: justification and realisation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Pick, Barbara (2018) Empirical analysis of geographical indications in France and Vietnam: opportunities and constraints. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Trotter, Sarah Jane (2018) On coming to terms: how European human rights law imagines the human condition. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Vitale, David Anthony (2018) Political trust and the enforcement of constitutional social rights. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Wu, Aaron (2018) Sustaining international law: history, nature, and the politics of global ordering. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sutton, Rebecca (2018) The international humanitarian actor as 'civilian plus': the circulation of the idea of distinction in international law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Larsen, Signe (2018) The European Union as a federation: a constitutional analysis. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Bronsther, Jacob (2018) Long-term incarceration and the moral limits of punishment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Krever, Tor (2018) The ideological origins of piracy in international legal thought. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Way, Sally-Anne (2018) Human rights from the Great Depression to the Great Recession: the United States, economic liberalism and the shaping of economic and social rights in international law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Leader, Kathryn (2017) Fifteen stories: litigants in person in the civil justice sytem. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Oghenevo Ovie Akpomiemie, Michael (2017) The social context of business and the tax system in Nigeria: the persistence of corruption. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Liberman, Dvora (2017) Custodians of continuity in an era of change: an oral history of the everyday lives of Crown Court clerks between 1972 and 2015. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Keenan, Bernard (2017) Interception: law, media, and techniques. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Živković, Velimir (2017) International investment protection and the national rule of law: a normative framework for a new approach. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zeffert, Henrietta (2017) Home and international law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Witney, Simon (2017) The corporate governance of private equity-backed companies. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zhu, Sally Shinan (2017) Law embodied: re-imagining a material legal normativity. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Chauhan, Apurv (2016) Developing a social psychology of poverty: social objects and dialogical representations. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Tschorne Venegas, Samuel (2016) The theoretical turn in British public law scholarship. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Wang, Chieh (2016) Sexuality, gender, justice and law: rethinking normative heterosexuality and sexual justice from the perspectives of queer humanist men and masculinities studies. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

O’Loughlin, Ailbhe (2016) Balancing rights? Dangerous offenders with severe personality disorders, the public, and the promise of rehabilitation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Burton, Marie (2015) Calling for justice: comparing telephone and face-to-face advice in social welfare legal aid. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Burke, Jarleth (2015) A market and government failure critique of services of general economic interest: testing the centrality and strictness of article 106(2) TFEU. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Stern, Orly (2015) The principle of distinction and women in conflicts in Africa. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Chadwick, Anna (2015) Food commodity speculation, hunger, and the global food crisis: whither regulation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Saab, Anne (2015) A legal inquiry into hunger and climate change: climate-ready seeds in the neoliberal food regime. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zaccaria, Elena (2015) Proprietary rights in indirectly held securities: legal risks and future challenges. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Willcox, Susannah (2015) Climate change inundation and Atoll Island States: implications for human rights, self-determination and statehood. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

King, Saskia (2015) Agreements that restrict competition by object under Article 101(1) TFEU: past, present and future. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zhang, Zhanwei (2015) Law, state and society in the PRC: a case study of family planning regulations implementation at grassroots level in rural China. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Agnew, Sinéad (2015) What we talk about when we talk about conscience: the meaning and function of conscience in commercial law doctrine. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Yoshida, Keina (2015) The cinematic jurisprudence of gender crimes: the ICTY and film. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Knight, Dean (2014) Vigilance and restraint in the common law of judicial review: scope, grounds, intensity, context. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

McGaughey, Ewan (2014) Participation in corporate governance. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Xiao, Yin (2014) Analysing the enforcement dimension of regulatory competition: a cultural institutionalist approach. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Knox, Robert (2014) A Critical Examination of the Concept of Imperialism in Marxist and Third World Approaches to International Law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Meerovitch, Vladimir (2014) Investor protection and equity markets: an evaluation of private enforcement of related party transactions rules in Russia. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Pearson, Megan Rebecca (2014) Religious objections to equality laws: reconciling religious freedom with gay rights. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Roznai, Yaniv (2014) Unconstitutional constitutional amendments: a study of the nature and limits of constitutional amendment powers. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

O'Regan, Karla Maureen (2014) Beyond illusion: a juridical genealogy of consent in criminal and medical law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Searl, Mark (2014) A normative theory of international law based on new natural law theory. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Coverdale, Helen (2013) Punishing with care: treating offenders as equal persons in criminal punishment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lamp, Nicolas (2013) Lawmaking in the multilateral trading system. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Perrone, Nicolas (2013) The international investment regime and foreign investors' rights: another view of a popular story. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Wei Liang Wang, Daniel (2013) Can litigation promote fairness in healthcare? The judicial review of rationing decisions in Brazil and England. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Majinge, Charles Riziki (2013) The United Nations, the African Union and the rule of law in Southern Sudan. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Gallo, Zelia (2013) The penality of politics, penality in contemporary Italy 1970-2000. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Jacques, Johanna (2013) From nomos to Hegung: war captivity and international order. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Manea, Sabina (2013) Instrumentalising property: an analysis of rights in the EU emissions trading system. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Yazdani, Shahid (2012) Emergency safeguard; WTO and the feasibility of emergency safeguard measures under the general agreement on trade in services. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lucey, Mary Catherine (2012) The interface between competition law and the restraint of trade doctrine for professionals: understanding the evolution of problems and proposing solutions for courts in England and Wales. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Grušić, Uglješa (2012) The international employment contract: ideal, reality and regulatory function of European private international law of employment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ali, Perveen (2012) States in crisis: sovereignty, humanitarianism, and refugee protection in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Dille, Benjamin B. (2012) Ill fares the land: the legal consequences of land confiscations by the Sandinista government of Nicaragua 1979-1990. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ho, Chih-Hsing (2012) Socio-legal perspectives on biobanking: the case of Taiwan. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Viterbo, Hedi (2012) The legal construction of childhood in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

De Witte, Floris (2012) EU law and the question of justice. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Spangler, Timothy (2012) Overcoming the governance challenge in private investment funds through the enrolment of private monitoring solutions. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sasso, Lorenzo (2012) Capital structure and corporate governance: the role of hybrid financial instruments. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Boukli, Paraskevi (2012) Imaginary penalities: reconsidering anti-trafficking discourses and technologies. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Gandrud, Christopher (2012) Knowing the unknowns: financial policymaking in uncertainty. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Laidlaw, Emily (2012) Internet gatekeepers, human rights and corporate social responsibilities. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Barroso, Luis (2011) The problems and the controls of the new administrative state of the EU. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zhu, Chenwei (2011) Authoring collaborative projects: a study of intellectual property and free and open source software (FOSS) licensing schemes from a relational contract perspective. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Nwosu, Udoka (2011) Head of state immunity in international law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ronnen, Edite (2011) Mediation in a conflict society: an ethnographic view on mediation processes in Israel. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Meyers, Jeffrey B. (2011) Toward a Negri-inspired theory of c/Constitution: a contemporary Canadian case study. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Kotsakis, Andreas (2011) The biological diversity complex: a history of environmental government. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Stergiou, Vasiliki (2011) The complex relationship of concentrated ownership structures and corporate governance. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Dias Soares, Claudia A. (2011) The design features of environmental taxes. MPhil thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Calich, Isabel (2011) The impact of globalisation on the position of developing countries in the international tax system. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Hood, Benjamin David (2011) What model for regulating employee discipline and grievances most effectively supports the policy objective of partnership at work and enhanced competitiveness? PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Li, Guoming (2011) The constitutional relationship between China and Hong Kong: a study of the status of Hong Kong in China’s system of government under the principle of ‘one Country, two systems’. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

John, Mathew (2011) Rethinking the secular state: perspectives on constitutional law in post-colonial India. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Bernal, Paul Alexander (2011) Do deficiencies in data privacy threaten our autonomy and if so, can informational privacy rights meet this threat? PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Pandya, Abhijit P.G. (2011) Interpretations and coherence of the fair and equitable treatment standard in investment treaty arbitration. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Thiratayakinant, Kraijakr Ley (2010) Multilateral supervision of regional trade agreements: Developing countries' perspectives. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Kapotas, Panos (2010) Positive action as a means to achieve full and effective equality in Europe. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Evans, E. Christine (2010) Right to reparations in international law for victims of armed conflict: Convergence of law and practice? PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Correia, Miguel G (2010) Taxation of corporate groups under a corporation income tax: An interdisciplinary and comparative tax law analysis. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Pappas, Demetra M (2010) The politics of euthanasia and assisted suicide: A comparative case study of emerging criminal law and the criminal trials of Jack 'Dr. Death' Kevorkian. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Brady, Alan David Patrick (2009) A structural, institutionally sensitive model of proportionality and deference under the Human Rights Act 1998. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Franey, Elizabeth Helen (2009) Immunity, individuals and international law: which individuals are immune from the jurisdiction of national courts under international law? PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Al-Ramahi, Aseel (2009) Competing rationalities: The evolution of arbitration in commercial disputes in modern Jordan. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Upton, John Dominic (2009) Constitutional thought of Joseph de Maistre. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Brilman, Marina C (2009) Georges Canguilhem: Norms and knowledge in the life sciences. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Minto, Indianna Deborah (2009) Incumbent response to telecommunications reform: The cases of Jamaica and Ireland, 1982-2007. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Heathcote, Gina (2009) Justifying force: A feminist analysis of the international law on the use of force. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Xu, Ting (2009) Property rights, governance and socio-economic transformation: the revival of private property and its limits in post-Mao China. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Roberts, Stephanie (2009) The decision making process of appeals against conviction in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division). PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Andreicheva, Natalia (2009) The role of legal capital rules in creditor protection: Contrasting the demands of western market economies with Ukraine's transitional economy. MPhil thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mundis, Daryl (2008) The law of naval exclusion zones. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Yong, Benjamin (2008) Becoming national: Contextualising the construction of the New Zealand nation-state. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Reynolds, Michael Paul (2008) Caseflow management: A rudimentary referee process, 1919-1970. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mettraux, Guenael (2008) Command responsibility in international law---the boundaries of criminal liability for military commanders and civilian leaders. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Shim, Jaejin (2008) Equality or the right to work? Explanation and justification of anti-discrimination rights in employment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Webb, Charlie Edward James (2008) Property, unjust enrichment and restitution. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Kulovesi, Kati (2008) The WTO dispute settlement system and the challenge of environment and legitimacy. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Dinniss, Heather Harrison (2008) The status and use of computer network attacks in international humanitarian law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Fasan, Oluseto (2007) Compliance with WTO law in developing countries: A study of South Africa and Nigeria. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Khasawneh, Bisher Hani (2007) An appraisal of the right of return and compensation of Jordanian nationals of Palestinian refugee origin and Jordan's right, under international law, to bring claims relating thereto, on their behalf to and against Israel and to seek compensation as a host state in light of the conclusion of the Jordan-Israel peace treaty of 1994. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Amodu, Tola (2007) The transformation of planning agreements as regulatory instruments in land-use planning in the twentieth century. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Panijpan, Kris (2006) Market dynamics in corporate governance: Lessons from recent developments in English law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Park, Jungwon (2006) Minority rights constraints on a state's power to regulate citizenship under international law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Kyprianou, Despina (2006) The role of the Cyprus attorney general's office in prosecutions: Rhetoric, ideology and practice. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Killick, Evan (2005) Living apart: separation and sociality amongst the Ashéninka of Peruvian Amazonia. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Menuchin, Shay Nisan (2005) The dilemma of international tax arbitrage: A comparative analysis using the cases of hybrid financial instruments and cross-border leasing. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Le, Net (2004) Refusal to license: Abuse of dominant position and switching costs. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sideri, Katerina (2003) The European Commission and the construction of information society: Regulatory law from a processual perspective. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Boelaert-Suominen, Sonja Ann Jozef (1998) International environmental law and naval war: The effect of marine safety and pollution conventions during international armed conflict. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mohamed, Mohamed Sameh Ahmed (1997) The role of the International Court of Justice as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Jurgielewicz, Lynne (1994) Global environmental change and international law: prospects for progress in the legal order. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Tsai, Ing-Wen (1983) Unfair trade practices and safeguard actions [A digital copy of Ing-wen Tsai's personal copy of the original thesis presented to the Library in 2019.]. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Douzinas, Constantinos (1983) Constitutional law and freedom of expression: a critique of the Constitution of the public sphere in legal discourse and practice with special reference to 20th century American law and jurisprudence. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lyall, Andrew Bremner (1980) The social origins of property and contract: a study of East Africa before 1918. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Harlow, Carol (1979) Administrative liability: a comparative study of French and English Law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Reynolds, James Isaac (1974) The slum tenant and the common law: a comparative study. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Edwards, Adolph (1968) The development of criminal law in Jamaica up to 1900. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lasok, Dominik (1954) The Polish Constitutions of 1947 and 1952: a historical study in constitutional law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings .

Login Alert

• > Journals
• > American Journal of International Law
• > AJIL Unbound
• > Volume 112
• > International Investment Law as International Law:...

Article contents

Categorization debates in russian scholarship, the western approach: points of similarity and difference, why the debates are significant, international investment law as international law: russian and western approaches.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2018

No Western publication on international investment law (IIL) has ever specifically undertaken a comparative study of Russian and Western doctrines of IIL. Although Russian scholars often contrast Western and Russian approaches to international law, scholars in the West mostly proceed without any discussion of Russian practice and perspectives. To fill this gap, this essay introduces the Russian approach to IIL and contrasts it with its Western counterpart. In particular, we show that the Russian approach focuses far more extensively on the nature and categorization of IIL and treats IIL primarily as private international law rather than public international law. The distinctive Russian approach has practical relevance for states and scholars, in part because it helps to explain why Russia has resisted efforts to reform investor-state dispute settlement.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the crystallization of IIL into a stand-alone legal concept became one of the most theoretically sensitive issues in Russian law. Different schools of thought developed regarding the legal nature and place of IIL within the larger bodies of public and private international law. In many ways, these categorization debates persist today and garner significant attention among Russian scholars. Textbooks on IIL, for example, always address the issue of categorization. Some do so at length.

One set of debates centers on whether IIL is a complex legal institution, a stand-alone field of law, or a subfield. Some argue that IIL qualifies as an institution. This view emphasizes the diversity of norms that are intrinsic to IIL, the numerous sources from which they derive (for example, international treaties, customary norms, and the resolutions of international organizations), Footnote 1 and the various fields of law to which they belong (for example, civil, administrative, and financial law). From this perspective, the law on investment relations is sui generis and multidisciplinary.

Other Russian scholars argue that IIL is better treated as “a stand-alone legal form which is in line with other fundamental fields of law.” Footnote 2 On this view, IIL is a separate field of law with unique purposes and special principles. Footnote 3 One scholar who adheres to this view describes IIL as “a system of principles and norms governing a wide range of relations between States and other subjects of international law about the introduction and operation of investments, their legal status, [and] investors’ protection and guarantees, as well as investment dispute settlement procedure.” Footnote 4

Yet another group of Russian scholars approaches IIL as a part of international economic law (IEL). Footnote 5 These writers define IIL as a “complex [system] of norms of international economic law which govern relations between states in the field of investment,” Footnote 6 or as a “sub-field of international economic law” and a “body of international norms which govern cross-border investment flows.” Footnote 7

A second area of debate concerns the place of IIL within broader systems of international law: is IIL a form of public or private law? Here, too, Russian scholars have adopted different views. Some believe that IIL constitutes a field of private international law. Footnote 8 Their reasoning focuses predominantly on the participation in IIL of foreign individual and legal persons in a private capacity as investors, and emphasizes the various ways in which the fundamental legal sources of IIL—the Washington Convention (establishing ICSID), Footnote 9 the Seoul Convention (establishing MIGA), Footnote 10 and regional and bilateral treaties on reciprocal encouragement and investment protection—govern relations between states and private investors. These commentators also point out that IIL governs interstate (public) relations to a much lesser extent, Footnote 11 and contend that the growing value of foreign investors to national economies makes it more appropriate to think of IIL as private law. Footnote 12

Although IIL is “designed to promote and protect the activities of private foreign investors,” Footnote 13 other commentators (ourselves included) view IIL as a form of public law. Alexander Bogatyrev first explored the possible development of IIL as an institution of public international law in 1992. Footnote 14 Roughly a decade later, the first comprehensive Russian study on the international legal regulation of foreign investment mirrored the Western approach in concluding that IIL constitutes a form of public law. Footnote 15 Other academics in Russia have since reached the same conclusion. Footnote 16 For instance, the treatise International Economic Law refers to IIL as the “international regime of foreign investment.” Footnote 17 Those who share this view recognize not only IIL, but also international trade law, international financial law, and international transport law, as subfields of public international law. Footnote 18 Their thinking demonstrates that some scholars in Russia are in step with the West on the categorization of IIL, despite the overall impression that the private international law school enjoys a much more secure position in Russian doctrine.

While interest in the nature and categorization of IIL is particularly acute in Russia, Westerners seem to struggle with the same challenge. The absence of a shared definition has galvanized Western academics to create a rich palette of definitions, including “area,” Footnote 19 “field,” Footnote 20 “subfield,” Footnote 21 and “branch.” Footnote 22 This terminological conflict adds another layer of confusion for those who seek to understand IIL as a field of law.

One cohort of Western academics treats IIL as its own area of international law. Footnote 23 This group first emerged in the 1990s. At that time, international investment law did not yet exist as an independent discipline, scholars portrayed it as part of international politics rather than international law, Footnote 24 and doctrinal writings focused mostly on “the protection of foreign investment under customary international law, investor-state contracts, and contract-based arbitration.” Footnote 25 In this context, Dolzer and Stevens, Footnote 26 Brower and Brueschke, Footnote 27 and Schreuer Footnote 28 proffered a distinctive position. In 1995, for example, Dolzer and Stevens urged the international community to regard investment treaties “not as isolated instances of bilateral treaty-making but as an emerging practice giving rise to common standards of investment protection.” Footnote 29 These scholars arguably pioneered the idea of treating investment treaty law as a distinct body of international law.

Other Western commentators Footnote 30 consider IIL to be a species of public international law. Some go so far as to claim that IIL “is best described as a field of public international law which deals with the laws governing the commercial activities of multinational enterprises that are undertaken in foreign states.” Footnote 31 To support their argument, these scholars highlight the existence of international investment treaties, Footnote 32 given that treaties in general are “creatures of public international law.” Footnote 33

Still other Western commentators view international investment law as an area of IEL, which is a branch of public international law. As one American scholar put it, IIL is “rapidly evolving toward becoming a core topic of international economic law and international law more generally.” Footnote 34 This position tends to emphasize the conceptual links that IIL shares with IEL.

In these ways, Russian and Western discourse are both similar and different. Both sides are concerned with categorizing IIL. Both feature at least some adherents to the view that IIL is a part of IEL or a form of public international law. But each community has a distinct heritage and narratives, and each tends to categorize IIL in its own way. The Russian legal literature suggests that Russia places much more emphasis on treating international foreign investment law as “the most important area of private international law” Footnote 35 —an idea that the representatives of the “public international law” school, including the authors of this essay, do not support.

In contrast, Western debates (at least currently) seem mainly to revolve around whether investment treaties are a form of international economic law or public international law. Unlike the Russian academic debate, Western literature makes little mention of IIL as an area of private international law. A few Western authors refer to a hybrid public/private approach that recognizes both public and private elements in IIL, Footnote 36 but the general tendency in the West has been to move the conceptualization of IIL from a private starting point to a public one.

Russian debates over the nature of IIL are significant for multiple reasons. First, the Russian tendency to favor the characterization of IIL as a form of private international law rather than public international law helps to explain Russia's resistance in the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) to the movement toward more public international law measures for investment treaty reform, such as increased transparency, the recalibration of interpretive authority, and the multilateral investment court system. As regards transparency, for instance, the existing system is largely built on international commercial arbitration. Since such arbitration has traditionally rejected transparency as an essential ingredient of dispute settlement, Russia has resisted the reform. Footnote 37 In general, Russia has pursued an inflexible, traditionalist approach to the UNCITRAL discussions and seems to be one of the states most opposed to efforts to make the system more multilateral, more transparent, more state driven, and consequently more public.

This position stands in contrast to American, European, and Canadian approaches to the UNCITRAL reforms. The United States has supported some movement toward making IIL more public (as with transparency), but remains cautious about extending these moves too far. Footnote 38 The European Union Footnote 39 and Canada Footnote 40 have openly encouraged greater transparency within and as a part of IIL. These approaches flow more naturally from the public law paradigm.

Second, Russian debates over the categorization of IIL are significant because they are emblematic of a broader tendency in Russian legal discourse and scholarship. To name just one example, a similar orientation toward definitions and categorization appears in Russian writing on space law, where commentators have focused extensively on problems with the definition of key concepts such as “spacecraft,” “outer space,” and “activities in space.” Footnote 41 As Roberts explains, “this fixation on definitions is a classic trait of Russian international law scholarship” and was “an important way for academics to play it safe during Soviet times.” Footnote 42 Categorization debates are also present in Western discourse on IIL, but Western legal scholars and practitioners will be better equipped to engage with Russia on IIL and other topics if they are aware of the central role of these debates in Russian thinking.

This essay has described Russian views on the nature and categorization of IIL. We have suggested that while the dominant approach views IIL as a form of private international law, there are other, less visible perspectives in Russian scholarship that more closely align with Western trends, such as the approaches that treat IIL as an area of international economic law or of public international law. For now, however, recalling Russia's preference for the private international law framework can help state negotiators and scholars understand Russia's position in UNCITRAL and elsewhere.

1 Valery Lisitsa , Investment Law 25 (2015). Russian authorities cited in notes 2–20, except for notes 9–10 and 13, are in Russian. All translations from Russian herein are by the present authors.

2 Anna V. Popova, Investment Law as an Integral Element of the Russian Law System, L. & Mod. States 17 (No. 4, 2014).

3 Arsen Ajupov, On the Place of International Investment Law Within the System of International Law , Russ. Newsl. on Foreign Econ . 74 (Jan. 2007).

4 Larisa Volova, Development of the International Regime of Foreign Investments , Terra Economicus 116, 118 (No. 4, 2011).

5 Vladimir Shumilov , International Economic Law 530–33 (2011).

6 International Law: Textbook in 2 Volumes 272 (Alexander Vylegzhanin ed., 2015).

7 Shumilov , supra note 5, at 541.

8 See, e.g. , Mark Boguslavskij , Private International Law 264 (2009); Galina Dmitrieva , Private International Law (2013); Natalia Erpyleva , Private International Law (2012).

9 Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes Between States and Nationals of Other States , Mar. 18, 1965, 575 UNTS 159.

10 Convention Establishing the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency , Oct. 11, 1985, TIAS No. 12089, 24 I.L.M. 1598 (1985).

11 Valery Lisitsa , Legal Regime of Investment Relations: Theory, Legislation and Applicable Practice 53 (2011).

12 B oguslavskij , supra note 8, at 21.

13 Rudolf Dolzer & Christoph Schreuer , Principles of International Investment Law 44 (2d ed. 2012).

14 Alexander Bogatyrev, Investment Law (1992).

15 See Dmitry Labin , International Legal Regulation of Foreign Investment (2001).

16 See Natalia Doronina, Regulatory Principles as an Interpretational Source for Legal Norms (the Case of Bilateral Treaties on Investment Protection) , Russ. L.J. 123 (No. 5, 2016); Olga Tolochko, On the Question of the Legal Regulation of Contemporary International Economic Relations , S. Fed. Univ. L. Sch. Newsl. 66 (N o. 1, 2005).

17 International Economic Law 182–91 (Alexander Vylegzhanin ed., 2012).

18 Tolochko, supra note 16, at 66–73.

19 See Campbell McLachlan, Investment Treaties and General International Law , 57 Int'l & Comp. L.Q. 361, 397 (2008); Joost Pauwelyn, At the Edge of Chaos? Foreign Investment Law as a Complex Adaptive System, How It Emerged and How It Can Be Reformed , 29 ICSID R ev . 372 (2014).

20 Stephan W. Schill, Enhancing International Investment Law's Legitimacy: Conceptual and Methodological Foundations of a New Public Law Approach , 52 Va. J. Int'l L. 57 (2011).

21 Anthea Roberts, Clash of Paradigms: Actors and Analogies Shaping the Investment Treaty System , 107 AJIL 45, 46–47, 57 (2013).

22 David Collins , An Introduction to International Investment Law sec. 1.1, at 1 (2016).

23 See, e.g. , Investment Law Within International Law: Integrationist Perspectives (Freya Baetens ed., 2013); Giorgio Sacerdoti, Bilateral Treaties and Multilateral Instruments on Investment Protection , 269 Receuil des Cours 251 (1997).

24 Stephan W. Schill, W(h)ither Fragmentation? On the Literature and Sociology of International Investment Law , 22 Eur. J. Int'l L . 875, 883 (2001).

26 Rudolf Dolzer & Margrete Stevens, Bilateral Investment Treaties (1995).

27 Charles N. Brower & Jason D. Brueschke, The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal (1998).

28 Christoph Schreuer , The ICSID Convention – A Commentary (2001).

29 Schill, supra note 24 , at 882.

30 See, e.g. , J osé E. Alvarez , The Public International Law Regime Governing International Investment (2011); Andrew Newcombe & Lluís Paradell , Law and Practice of Investment Treaties (2009).

31 Collins , supra note 22 , at sec. 1.1, at 1.

32 Investment Law Within International Law , supra note 23, at 3.

33 Roberts, supra note 21 , at 45, 50.

34 Steven R. Ratner, International Investment Law Through the Lens of Global Justice , 20 J. Int'l Econ. L . 747, 751 (2017).

35 Erpyleva , supra note 8, at 515.

36 See, e.g. , Zachary Douglas, The Hybrid Foundations of Investment Treaty Arbitration , 2003 Brit. Y.B. Int'l L. 151; Roberts, supra note 21 , at 50.

37 Recording: United Nations Comm'n on Int'l Trade Law , 34th Sess. (Nov. 1 – Dec. 2017).

39 UN Comm'n on Int'l Trade Law, Possible Reform of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS): Submission from the European Union, UN Doc. A/CN.9/WG.III/WP.145, Annex, para. 3 (Nov. 20, 2017).

40 Recording: United Nations Comm'n on Int'l Trade Law, supra note 37 .

41 Anthea Roberts , Is International Law International? 187-88 (2017).

This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref .

• Google Scholar

View all Google Scholar citations for this article.

Save article to Kindle

To save this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle .

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

• Dmitry K. Labin (a1) and Alena V. Soloveva (a2)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2018.58

Save article to Dropbox

To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox .

Save article to Google Drive

To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive .

Reply to: Submit a response

- No HTML tags allowed - Web page URLs will display as text only - Lines and paragraphs break automatically - Attachments, images or tables are not permitted

Your details

Your email address will be used in order to notify you when your comment has been reviewed by the moderator and in case the author(s) of the article or the moderator need to contact you directly.

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests.

Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners.

• Bibliography
• More Referencing guides Blog Automated transliteration Relevant bibliographies by topics
• Automated transliteration
• Relevant bibliographies by topics
• Referencing guides

Embargoed and Restricted Access

Reason: Under embargo until August 2023. After this date a copy can be supplied under Section 51(2) of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 by submitting a document delivery request through your library, or by emailing [email protected]

Rethinking International Investment Law for Sustainable Development: The Role of Stakeholders

Campus location, principal supervisor, additional supervisor 1, year of award, department, school or centre, degree type, usage metrics.

• International trade and investment law

International and Comparative Law Research Scholars

Each year we welcome 15 to 25 scholars from around the globe into our community as non-degree International and Comparative Law Research Scholars to conduct research and engage fully in the intellectual and social life of Michigan Law School. Visits vary in length from a few weeks to one year.

As you can imagine, we receive many more excellent applications than we could ever accept, so those chosen are senior scholars with impressive accomplishments, mid-career intellectuals who are beginning to make their mark, or early-career researchers who show special promise for the future. While they may come from many walks of life—junior or senior faculty members in law or related fields, doctoral or postdoctoral students, and public service practitioners—in all cases, they are exploring areas of law that intrigue our faculty members and for which we can provide meaningful academic support.

International and Comparative Law Research Scholars pay a fee of $2,500 for each semester or $5,000 for each full academic year in residence, prorated for stays of less than a semester.  Requests for fee reductions or waivers are considered on a case-by-case basis.

Research Scholar Program Privileges 

With the intention of ensuring that all our Research Scholars have productive, lively and satisfying experiences while they are with us, our program includes the following privileges:

• Assigned personal workspace (private office or individual workstation) within a large suite that is dedicated solely to Research Scholars and SJD  students.
• Attend JD classes with the permission of the professor.
• Access the Law School’s extensive library collections and first-rate research facilities, including Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis.
• Access the library resources of the larger University.
• Participate in a weekly colloquium of Michigan Research Scholars and SJD students to discuss works in progress.
• Assist in organizing the Michigan Law School Junior Scholars Conference.
• Attend workshops, lectures, and other events.
• Engage with the broader University campus, including other schools, departments and centers.

Program Participants

Most recently, our research scholar program has included faculty members from Kyoto University in Japan, the University of Osnabrueck in Germany, Peking and Renmin universities in Beijing, the University of the Philippines and of Aix-Marseille in France, as well as the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland; a counsel to the Slovenian Ministry of Justice, the former chairperson of the Irish Society for European Law; staff members of the Japanese and Korean Ministries of Justice; a consultant to the UNHCR office in Morocco and a policy adviser to the Danish Refugee Council; counsel to the Brazilian legislature; a deputy chief at the Supreme Commercial Court of the Russian Federation; and doctoral students from major universities all over the world. Their research interests have encompassed a broad array of legal and interdisciplinary subjects.

How to Apply

You will need a Google account to access, save, and submit applications.

Next, please complete the online Michigan Law Research Scholar application form. The application form asks for biographical data, educational and work history, proposed dates of stay, and the names of the University of Michigan Law faculty with whom you would like to confer during your stay.

Please note that you are not expected to contact Michigan Law professors in advance of your application. We will notify the appropriate faculty on your behalf as part of the admission process to gauge their level of interest.

You will also be asked to upload the following materials with your application:

• CV or resume
• Description of your intended research project and its purpose (e.g. doctoral thesis, journal publication), as well as a description of how a research scholar visit will be of value
• Two letters of reference from academics familiar with your work
• Level of English fluency, in particular speaking and listening comprehension, and a description of your training and experience in EnglishTOEFL or IELTS score and/or academic records may be requested on a case by case basis.

Apply Now

International and Comparative Law Research Fellowships 

Applicants to the Law School’s research scholar program may be eligible for very limited supplemental funding, which is granted on a competitive basis and considerate of need. 

After submission of the applicant’s International and Comparative Law Research Scholar application, those interested in being considered for these fellowships will be asked to submit a separate fellowship application. 

International and Comparative Law Research Fellowships are intended to assist with living expenses while researchers are in full-time residence. Most research scholars are supported by funds from other sources, such as Fulbright or sabbatical leave salary from their home university. Because of stiff competition for Michigan Law funding, applicants are encouraged to seek alternate sources of support. 

Due to funding limitations, we are not in a position to provide support for accompanying family members. 

Deadline: January 15 

The application deadline for the International and Comparative Law Research Scholar Program and for International and Comparative Law Research Fellowships is January 15 for visits proposed in the following summer, fall, or winter terms (June through May). 

Applicants are encouraged to apply to multiple institutions as the selection process is competitive. Although applications are welcome at any time during the year, those who apply after January 15 risk that space and funding may no longer be available.​​

Research Scholars

Bio:  Luís Armando Saboya is a Brazilian lawyer and professor. He holds a degree in Law from the University of Fortaleza, a postgraduate degree in Business Law and Management from the University of Fortaleza, and a master’s degree in Constitutional Law from the University of Fortaleza. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in Commercial Law at the University of São Paulo.

Research Focus:  Luis’ research focuses on the rights of minority shareholders in cases of Judicial Recovery.

Languages: Portuguese (native), Spanish (fluent), French (beginner-level proficiency)

Bio:  Maxim Bönnemann is a research fellow at Humboldt University Berlin and the Kassel Institute for Sustainability. In 2022 he defended his PhD in the law and politics of Special Economic Zones at Humboldt University for which he was awarded the Law School Prize for Best Dissertation in Public Law. Since 2021, he has also been a permanent editor of the Verfassungsblog, covering comparative constitutional and environmental law. Maxim has been a visiting researcher at the National Law University, Delhi, and at the Centre for Policy Research ( CPR ). Before his legal studies, he worked for a human rights NGO in Moscow. Maxim has authored several papers and book chapters on comparative legal theory and has edited a book on “The Global South and Comparative Constitutional Law” ( OUP , 2020).

Research Focus:  Maxim’s main research interests lie in comparative legal theory, political institutions and international economic law. During his stay at Michigan he will pursue a project on the role of non-majoritarian institutions in environmental and climate governance, in addition to a comparative project on the evolution of national Special Economic Zone laws.

Languages : German (native), Russian (proficient), French (elementary)

Bio:  Jonathan Bonnitcha is an Associate Professor, in Law at the University of New South Wales. He holds the degrees of DP hil, MP hil and BCL from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes scholar, and the degrees of LLB and BE c from the University of Sydney.

Jonathan’s research examines international and domestic legal regimes governing foreign investment. He is the author of two books on investment treaties, including (with Lauge Poulsen and Michael Waibel) The Political Economy of the Investment Treaty Regime.

Much of Jonathan’s research is inter-disciplinary. His article (with Emma Aisbett) ‘A Pareto Improving Compensation Rule for Investment Treaties’ won the John Jackson prize for the best article published in the Journal of International Economic Law in 2021. A forthcoming article (with Zoe Phillips Williams) in Law & Policy empirically examines the impact of investment treaties on domestic governance in developing countries, through cross-country quantitative analysis and a detailed qualitative case-study on Myanmar.

Research:  Jonathan is currently working on two research projects. The first (with Taylor St John) is a comparative study of domestic investment laws. The project seeks to identify and explain shifts in the functions and content of national investment laws over time and space. The second (with Zhenyu Xiao) uses a series of case studies from across the Belt and Road Initiative to explore the legal and political dynamics in renegotiation of infrastructure contracts between Chinese foreign investors and host governments.

Languages:  Spanish (intermediate); Burmese (basic)

Bio:  Mireille is a doctoral student in legal history and civil law at Université Laval’s Faculty of Law in cotutelle with the Sciences Po Law School in Paris. She is a member of the Groupe de recherche sur les humanités juridiques. Mireille holds a bachelor’s degree in civil law and common law from the McGill Faculty of Law (2016) and a master’s degree in law and society from the University of Victoria (2018). Her master’s thesis focused on the intellectual contexts of the 1900 Comparative Law Congress in Paris. A member of the Quebec Bar since 2018, she worked as a law clerk at the Quebec Court of Appeal from 2018 to 2020. 

Research Focus:  Mireille’s research focuses on the contributions of civil society to the development of the civil law in the controversy over the nature and origins of legal personality in 19th-century France. In particular she looks at the way legal arguments published by lawyers and non-lawyers in the public press contribute to transforming the formal legal landscape in caslaw and doctrinal works. She is interested in developing a law and humanities research framework that can be applied in civil law countries, by mobilizing existing French-language theoretical resources and translating some English theoretical pieces to French.

Languages : French, Spanish

Bio : Jiwon Jheong has been a presiding judge of Geochang Branch of Changwon District Court of the Republic of Korea since 2020. She served as an associate judge of Seoul Central District Court from 2018 to 2020, and served as an associate judge of Ansan Branch of Suwon District Court from 2015 to 2018. She worked as a law clerk at Seoul High Court from 2014 to 2015. Before entering her profession, from 2012 to 2013, she was assigned to the two-year program at the Supreme Court of Korea’s Judicial Research and Training Institute. As a judge and a former law clerk, she has dealt with a wide range of labor cases as well as civil and criminal cases. She won 2020, 2021 Outstanding Judge of the Year by Gyeongsangnam-province Bar Association. 

Jiwon is also a member of the Labor Law Community of the Supreme Court of Korea. She is one of the co-authors of the revised edition of “The Commentary on the Trade Unions and Labor Relations Adjustment Act ( TULRAA )”, a notable legal commentary in Korea.

She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Seoul National University College of Humanities in 2012 and a Master of Laws degree in administrative law from Seoul National University School of Law in 2018. 

Research Focus : Jiwon’s research first focuses on the criteria for deciding an appropriate bargaining unit in the U.S. legal system. Korea’s collective bargaining system is unique in that the TULRAA defines the bargaining unit as a business or workplace. However, the Labor Relations Commission ( LRC ) may divide the bargaining unit if there is any considerable disparity in working conditions, employment status, and bargaining practices. As there is a scarcity of precedents on the separation criteria of bargaining units, she hopes to deepen her understanding of the concrete criteria for determining an appropriate bargaining unit in the U.S. 

The second part of her research focuses on the legal principle of joint employment in the U.S. A segment of Korean legal society argues that the adoption of the U.S. approach will represent an expansion of the nature of employers as a party to collective bargaining compared to the currently dominant interpretation under TULRAA . Scrutinizing the legal principle of joint employment in the U.S. will provide an additional perspective on the concept of an employer in a collective bargaining setting and determining whether it is possible to expand the concept of a client company in an in-house subcontracting relationship. 

Languages : Korean (native), Chinese (intermediary), Japanese elementary)

Bio:  Dr. Muhammad Asif Khan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Law at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities in the National University of Science and Technology Islamabad, Pakistan. He is also the Head of the Department of Law. He holds an LL .B. from University of Peshawar (Pakistan), and an LL .M. from the University of Liverpool ( UK ) in Public International Law. He defended his PhD thesis “Adjusting Business Entities in a Globalized World: The Concept of an International Treaty Regulating Transnational Corporations against Violations of International Law” at the University of Salzburg (Austria) in May 2015. He has vast experience in teaching Public International Law and has served in different public sector universities in Pakistan. He has worked as a consultant with the International Committee of the Red Cross ( ICRC ) in Pakistan. He has also worked as a Business and Human Rights Specialist with the United Nations Development Program ( UNDP ) in the Decentralisation, Human Rights and Local Governance Project ( DHL ) in Pakistan. He has remained a member of the governance committee of teaching business and human rights forum for one year (2021-2022). He is an associate editor of the  Manchester Journal of Transnational Islamic Law and Practice  and the  NUST Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities . His teaching activities include undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Public International Law, International Humanitarian Law, Business and Human Rights, Human Rights Law and Jurisprudence.

Research Focus:  Dr. Khan’s research activities focus on Business and Human Rights along with issues related with International Humanitarian Law including cyber warfare. Previously, his research has focussed on the regulation of transnational corporations and other business entities through an international treaty. At Michigan he will be focussing on human rights protection through international investment law. The major outcome will be to explore the possibility of including human rights protection clauses in bilateral investment treaties and international investment agreements from the perspectives of South Asian states. 

Languages:  Pashto (native), Urdu and English

Bio:  Kana Koyasu is a public prosecutor in Japan. She graduated from Waseda Law School with a Juris Doctor degree. After she passed the Japanese Bar Exam, she was appointed Public Prosecutor in December 2017 and has been working at the Sapporo District Public Prosecutors Office since 2023. She has been working in both the criminal and trial division of a number of District Public Prosecutors Offices for six years, gaining experience as a public prosecutor.

As a practicing lawyer, she has handled a number of difficult and complex criminal cases and has successfully prosecuted and argued a number of them. She was recommended by the Public Prosecutors Office in Japan and is currently beginning studies and research at the University of Michigan Law School as a research scholar.

Research Focus:  Kana’s research focuses on recent developments in the legislation and practice of the criminal justice system in the U.S. In general, the U.S. is much quicker than other countries in reflecting changes in socioeconomic conditions in its legal systems and practice. There are many lessons that Japan should learn in order to timely catch socioeconomic changes and expeditiously take legislative and other actions in line with such changes. A general study of such recent legislation and its practice will be indispensable for the future development of the criminal justice system in Japan.

Languages:  Japanese (native)

Bio:  Isola Clara Macchia is a Ph.D. Researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her Ph.D. project investigates how the European Union enforces sustainable development clauses in its Free Trade Agreements, and whether variations in enforcement can be detected. She holds a Law degree from the University of Bologna and an MS c in European and International Public Policy from the London School of Economics. Isola Clara is a member of the Jean Monnet Module “Reforming the Global Economic Governance: The EU for SDG s in International Economic Law” research team at the University of Bologna, funded by the European Union. Before her Ph.D., she worked at the European Commission in the Directorate-General for Employment as a trainee on Directives’ implementation and infringement proceedings. She also served as a researcher at the Attorney General’s Office in Bologna working on regional cooperation in law enforcement and as a research assistant in international law at the University of Bologna. 

Research Focus:  At Michigan Law School, Isola Clara’s research will focus on the comparison between the EU ’s and U.S.’ approaches to enforcing international law, specifically in the area of trade and sustainable development. The choice to compare these two legal systems stems from the recurrent juxtaposition of the EU ’s cooperation-based model with the U.S.’ sanction-based one. The doctoral project investigates the mutual supportiveness of these two different approaches and whether their combination can help in ensuring a more consistent enforcement.

Languages:  Italian (native), Spanish (intermediate), French (elementary)

Bio:  Csongor István Nagy is professor of law at the University of Szeged and research professor at the Center for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Research Network. He is a recurrent visiting professor at the Central European University (Budapest/New York/Vienna) and the Sapientia University of Transylvania (Romania), and an associate member at the Center for Private International Law at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. 

Csongor graduated at the Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences (dr. jur.), where he also earned a Ph.D. He received master ( LL .M.) and S.J.D. degrees from the Central European University and a D.Sc. degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He pursued graduate studies in Rotterdam, Heidelberg and Ithaca (New York) and had visiting appointments in the Hague, Munich, Brno, Hamburg, Edinburgh, London, Riga, Bloomington (Indiana), Brisbane, Beijing, Taipei and Rome. 

He has more than 260 publications in English, French, German, Hungarian, Romanian and (in translation) in Croatian and Spanish. 

Research Focus:  The purpose of Csongor Nagy’s research in Ann Arbor is to put the current European rule-of-law debate in the context of comparative federalism and to provide a normative analysis through the lens of US constitutional ideas. Benchmarking Europe’s idiosyncratic “federalism” should be an important facet of the social discourse on the “European project”, and comparative federalism could contribute significantly to the resolution of the EU ’s current constitutional crisis. The path the EU is walking in the direction of an “ever closer Union” is far from unprecedented and, as far as multilevel constitutionalism is concerned, EU law may draw on the experiences of various regimes where centralized human rights protection and state constitutional identities coexist.

Languages : German (fluent), Hungarian (native), Romanian (fluent), French (working knowledge), Spanish (basic)

Bio : Since November 2021, Orlando has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for European Law, KU Leuven. He obtained his master’s degree in law from the University of Pisa and his LL .M. in European, Comparative and International Law from the European University Institute. He holds an Honors Degree and a PhD in Law from Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. He was a visiting graduate student at the University of Toronto. After his PhD, Orlando was an Emile Noël Global fellow at NYU School of Law and a postdoctoral researcher at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome. He is admitted to the Italian Bar and is author of  Radical Constitutional Pluralism in Europe  (Routledge, 2023).

Research   Focus:  At Michigan, Orlando will be working on the incorporation of federal rights and on the subsequent emergence of New Judicial Federalism in the United States. This study of the American system is part of a broader research project on the incorporation of rights and on the reaction at the level of the constituent units in federal and quasi-federal systems. Part of the broader ERC RESHUFFLE at the KU Leuven, the project aims at comparing the twofold dynamic of incorporation and subsequent contestation in the United States, Canada, and the European Union.

Languages : Italian (native), French (advanced).

Bio:  Johannes Thierer is a PhD student at the Chair of Constitutional Law (Professor Johannes Masing) at the University of Freiburg (Germany) where he also worked as a research assistant from 2020 till 2023. He studied law at the University of Freiburg and the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and graduated in 2020. In his position as research assistant, he taught first and second semester students in constitutional law and European law. 

He currently works on his thesis about the European and American single market. His doctoral research is funded the German National Academic Foundation.

Johannes’ interests include European law, constitutional law and comparative law.

Research Focus:  Johannes’ PhD-project explores constitutional constraints against economic regulation of single member states in federal systems. It compares the fundamental freedoms of the European Union with the dormant Commerce Clause of the American Constitution. Whereas the doctrines and tests of the European Court of Justice and the US Supreme Court seem strikingly similar at first glance, Johannes’ aim is to examine the different notions and concepts behind the norms. Building on this, the project intends to rethink the EU ’s fundamental freedoms.

Languages:  German (native), Swedish (intermediate), French (elementary)

Bio:  Holding a Master’s Degree in Law  magna cum laude , Justin started his career as a researcher at KUL euven (Belgium). After completing this first professional experience, he wanted to gain practical experience and help disadvantaged groups. Therefore, Justin worked as a legal counsel in an association helping young people. After this first practical experience, he undertook the bar traineeship. Justin was fully admitted to the bar after successfully passing the bar exam in 2016. While doing his bar traineeship, he also started working at UCL ouvain (Belgium) in 2012. Justin has been lecturing various courses as a teaching assistant and, since 2020, as a lecturer. In 2021, he defended his Ph.D. thesis dealing with distressed sovereign debts. Justin will conduct postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan Law School as a B.A.E.F.  Fellow.

Research Focus:  In his Ph.D. thesis, Justin analyzed the regulation of the so-called “vulture funds” and proposed a new judicial approach in order to better address their speculation on sovereign debts. He wishes to expand the scope of his research findings and undertake a deeper comparative analysis during a one-year postdoctoral research stay at the University of Michigan Law School. The goal of this research project is to outline a legislative proposal concerned with profiteering in sovereign debts. Such a proposal appears to be of paramount importance given the boom in borrowing following the pandemic crisis.

Languages : French (native) and Dutch (proficient)

Bio : Eva-Maria Wettstein is a PhD student at the University of Cologne in Germany. She completed her state exam in law in 2022, which included a specialization on private international law, civil litigation, and economic law. Wettstein currently works as a trainee lawyer at Osborne Clarke’s Dispute and Risk Team in Cologne, where she is involved in an investor state arbitration proceeding. Additionally, she is a research fellow with the International Investment Law Centre Cologne ( IILCC , University of Cologne). In this capacity, Wettstein contributes to research and teaching in international investment law, arbitration law and public international law. As speaker of the German doctoral researchers’ network for international investment law, Wettstein regularly organizes events and encourages interaction between practitioners and academics.

Research Focus : Wettstein’s research focuses on the enforcement of investor-state arbitration awards between European investors and European Union member states (“intra- EU arbitration awards”) in the USA . The heart of the research question – whether intra- EU arbitration awards are enforceable in the USA – lies in the relationship of public international law, EU law and US law. Against this background, the research project aims to explore the interaction between courts of both sovereign EU member states and the USA as well as the interaction between their laws from an international legal perspective.

Languages : German (native), French (intermediate), Portuguese (elementary)

Bio:  Ms.Xiaodan ZHU is a Chinese professor specialized in International Tax Law. In this capacity, Xiaodan works at the Law School, Dalian Ocean University, where she also is the director of both Bachelor and Master Degree programs in Law. Prof. Zhu obtained a Ph.D. in International Tax Law from Xiamen University of China in 2013. She has been a Grotius Research Scholar of the University of Michigan Law School during 2015 and 2016. Her teaching activities include courses on international economic law, China’s tax law, and international tax law. Her wiritings (including journal articles and monographs) have appeared in many Chinese and English academic publications. Moreover, Professor Zhu is also a brilliant practical expert in tax law. She has been seconded to the Department of Tax Policy, Ministry of Finance of China in 2020, and she has been a part-time tax lawyer for almost six years in China.

Research Focus:  Professor Zhu’s research is titled “ Interaction Between the OECD ’s Global Minimum Tax Proposal and Tax Competition Rules: From the Perspective of China”, and the project addresses the following key issues: (1) What is the impact of OECD ’s Global Minimum Tax 

Proposal (Pillar 2) on China’s tax competition rules and domestic tax law? (2)Is there any legal experience in US tax law relating to minimum income tax which is valuable for China? (3) How would China figure out the tax reforms conflict between international “Global Minimum Tax ” and domestic “Tax and Fee Reduction Policy”? 

Languages:  Mandarin Chinese (native)

Bio: Niklas Burkart is a research assistant at the Institute for Public Law, Department of Constitutional Law at University of Freiburg. He currently works on his thesis about the conflict between Freedom of Art und Copyright. Burkart studied Law at Freiburg and Speyer. He was a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. During his legal clerkship he worked at a law firm specialized in administrative law and at the German Federal Foreign Office, Department of Human Rights, in Berlin. Burkart coordinates the DFG (German Research Council) project “Handbook of Constitutional Law – German Constitutional Law from a Transnational Perspective”. In his position as research assistant, he teaches first and second semester students in constitutional law. 

Research Focus:  Burkart’s PhD-project explores the relationship between Freedom of Art and Copyright from a fundamental law perspective. The thesis is driven by the idea of strengthening Art without threatening Copyright. This requires to reveal the parts of Copyright that are not based on Freedom of Property but on Personality Rights. Given the fact that German Copyright Law is regulated by European Law, the thesis has to address not only German but also European Fundamental Rights. To contrast the results, the conflict between Freedom of Art and Copyright shall also be examined under US  Law. 

Languages:  German (native), French (elementary)

Bio:  Andrew Cecchinato is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School and the School of History at the University of St Andrews. He is PI of the Horizon 2020 project on  John Selden’s Harmonic Jurisprudence. A European Interpretation of English Legal History . Previously, he was a postdoc in St Andrews, working on the ERC project  Civil Law, Common Law, Customary Law: Consonance Divergence and Transformation in Western Europe from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries . 

Andrew is book review editor for the American Journal of Legal History. He has received scholarships from the Max-Planck-Institute für europäische Rechtsgeschichte and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. He has also been a visiting researcher at the Robbins Collection in Civil and Religious Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the Library of Congress. He studied law at the University of Trento, where his PhD on  The Legal Education of Thomas Jefferson  won the faculty prize. 

Research Focus:  Andrew’s main research aims to repurpose the idea of Europe by studying how the seventeenth-century jurist, historian, and Hebraist John Selden harmonized the history of English law and the authority of the European legal tradition. His project will center on Selden’s effort to preserve and harmonize the history of English law within the inclusive order of nations recognized by a distinct reading of medieval and modern European jurisprudence. The research will thus focus on the cogent yet overlooked reasoning by which Selden proved that no law, however discrete, can rightfully be understood if isolated from the continuum of legal experience. 

Languages:  English and Italian (native), French and German (elementary)

Bio:  Fabian is a PhD Candidate in public international law at Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. His doctoral research is funded by a W.M. Tapp Studentship and the German National Academic Foundation. Previously, Fabian was a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, and read law in Hamburg (Dipl. Jur.) and Oxford (M.Jur.).

At the University of Cambridge, Fabian has supervised undergraduates and conducted workshops for Cambridge LL .M. students in International Investment Law and International Law as a Legal System. He is currently an Associate Editor at International Law in Domestic Courts ( OUP ) and an Assistant Editor for Investment Arbitration at Kluwer Arbitration Blog.

In recent years, Fabian has worked as a research assistant for Professor Campbell McLachlan, Professor Eyal Benvenisti and Sir Christopher Greenwood. In 2022, his article on informal communications to the ICJ was awarded the Rosalyn Higgins Prize of The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals.  

Research Focus:  Fabian’s research interests lie in the areas of general international law, international dispute settlement, international investment law and German public law. His PhD project (“Self-Judgment in International Law”) investigates to what extent states can authoritatively auto-interpret international law. It traces the evolution of self-judgment throughout the history of international law, unearths links between self-judgment and the concept of obligation in international law, and assesses the approach of international courts and tribunals. Against this background, the project develops a theoretical and doctrinal framework to accommodate self-judgment in international law. 

Languages: German (native), French (proficient, C1 ), Spanish (advanced, B1 / B2 ), Hindi (Basic), Italian (Basic)

Bio : Hijratullah Ekhtyar is an International & Comparative Law Research Scholar of the University of Michigan Law School. He served as a lecturer at the Nangarhar University Faculty of Law and Political Science since 2012 to 2021, and also was provincial director for the Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Services Commission of Afghanistan in Nangarhar province since 2018 to 2021. Ekhtyar also worked as a local coordinator and journalist for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting ( IWPR ) in eastern provinces (Laghman, Nangarhar, Kunar, and Noristan) from 2011 to 2014. He served as a Lawyer and Provincial Commissioner for the Independent Electoral Compliant Commission ( IECC ) of Afghanistan in Nangarhar province from 2009 to 2011. Moreover, he served as an administrative clerk for the Economic Committee of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009. He also worked for Mediothek Afghanistan, a German based NGO as an in-charge of Academic and Cultural Affairs from 2007 to 2008.

He obtained LL .M degree in Sustainable International Development ( SID ) program from the University of Washington Law School in 2017, and completed his undergraduate studies in the Nangarhar University Faculty of Law and Political Science in 2008.

Ekhtyar participated in the University of Washington School of Law visiting scholar program in 2015, and attended the International Visitor Leadership Program ( IVLP ) of the State Department of the United States in 2013.

Ekhtyar also run Ekhtyar Legal Services ( ELS ), a non-profit legal assistance provider organization in Nangarhar province from 2009 to 2015. He was a certified defense lawyer under the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association during 2009-2015.

After completion of his graduate studies in the University of Washington Law School, he served as a Legal Research Intern in the Library of Congress in 2017.

During his tenure with IWPR , Ekhtyar wrote about 30 articles for  www.iwpr.net . He also published an article about combating corruption in Afghanistan in  https://nsuworks.nova.edu/ilsajournal/vol24/iss1/4/  and  https://www.ijlsr.in/ijlsr_special_issue_june_2018 . Furthermore, he wrote/ translated more than 20 books and numerous articles that are published in national language, Pashto.

Ekhtyar received a Medal of Excellence from Zhwand Group of Companies and Green Motion for his writings in 2014. 

Research Focus : Ekhtyar’s research focus is on International Law of Armed Conflicts, Good Governance, Corruption, and Constitutional Law. He recently completed his research project on the Hiring Process of lecturers in Afghanistan universities. He is currently working on another research project focusing on Constitutionalism in Afghanistan. The main theme of his research is how to adopt a comprehensive constitution for Afghanistan to end up the long-lasting crises and war in that country.

Languages : Pashto and Dari (native), English (excellent), and Urdu (elementary).

Bio: Giulia Giusy Cusenza is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law at the University of Udine in Italy, where she is also an adjunct professor of administrative law at the Engineering Faculty. She earned her Ph.D. in administrative law from the University of Trento in 2020, and in 2018 she obtained an Intensive International Master of Laws ( I.I.LL.M. ) held by the European Public Law Organization in Athens. In recent years she has been lecturing various courses as a teaching assistant and as a lecturer. Moreover, she became a lawyer in 2018, and she was awarded the title of lawyer specialized in administrative law in June 2022 by the Italian National Bar Council.

Research Focus: Giulia’s research investigates the implications of the digitalization process and the application of artificial intelligence on public administrations and judicial activities. She is conducting comparative research on assessment procedures for developing algorithmic systems within the public administration. Her current project aims at studying the benefits of prioritizing stakeholders’ welfare in algorithm design for public administrations by implementing democratic and participatory processes. Her research interests revolve around administrative law and comparative administrative law.

Languages: Italian (native)

Bio:  Maria Haag is a lecturer of European law at Tilburg University Law School (Netherlands). She holds an LL .B. from Durham University (United Kingdom), and an LL .M. from the European University Institute (Italy). She defended her PhD thesis “A Sense of Responsibility: The Shifting Roles of the Member States for the Union Citizen” at the European University Institute in October 2019. She has previously worked as a trainee at the Legal Service of the European Commission and a research assistant at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advance Studies (Italy). From August to December 2016, Maria visited Michigan Law School for the first time as a Grotius Research Scholar. She is an editor for the European Law Blog and an external editor for the European Journal of Legal Studies. Her teaching activities include undergraduate and postgraduate courses on EU constitutional law, internal market and free movement law, judicial protection, and migration law.

Research Focus:  Maria previously developed the concept of responsibility as a prism to re-evaluate the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and to differentiate between the roles that the home and the host Member States play for EU citizens. Building on this, she now wishes to examine further aspects of the concept of responsibility: the responsibilities of citizens in EU law, on the one hand, and the responsibility of the Union as whole for its citizens, on the other.

Languages : German (native), French, Dutch

Bio:  Lucas Hartmann is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Legal Theory at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Prior to that, he conducted research at the Institute for German and European Administrative Law at the University of Heidelberg. Lucas’ research interests focus on legal theory, on comparative law studies, and on European Union Law.

Lucas defended his PhD entitled “The Codification of EU Administrative Law” (“Die Kodifikation des Europäischen Verwaltungsrechts”) at the University of Heidelberg in 2019. He was also a visiting researcher at Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne (France) in 2021 and was awarded a three-year full-time Senior Researcher Fellowship (“Eigene Stelle”) from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – DFG ) in 2020. 

Research Focus:  At Michigan, Lucas will focus on his comparative research project on judicial lawmaking. The aim of this research project is to compare German concepts of dynamic interpretation with similar understandings concerning the role of judicial lawmaking in the USA , France, and the EU that allow or forbid courts to develop the constitution, statutes, or “the law” in general. In particular, he intends to learn about the American practice and literature on constitutional and statutory construction, common law reasoning, and judicial activism/restraint.

Languages:  German, English and French

Bio:  Moshe Jaffe is a JSD candidate at Bar Ilan University, and an LLM Graduate from Columbia Law School. Jaffe is a constitutional law Adjunct Professor at the Academic Center of Law and Science in Israel, and an Adjunct Professor at Cardozo School of Law. As an Israeli lawyer, Jaffe represented dozens of cases before the Israeli Supreme Court with emphasis on Religion and State, Human Rights, and National Security. Simultaneously, Jaffe serves as a legal advisor for the Counter-Terrorism section in the IDF ’s Department of the Legal Advisor to Judea and Samaria. Jaffe also serves as an administrative judge on the Confiscation of Funds Committee of the Money Laundering Headquarters tribunal.

Research Focus:  Jaffe’s research comparatively addresses the constitutionality and the use of proportionality tests in judicial review of tax legislation. The research focuses on three different judicial systems — Israel, the U.S, and Jewish Law. Alongside the main issue, the research addresses the questions of tax definitions and equality in tax law. The research’s main argument is that the Israeli proportionality doctrine is the most effective and correct instrument for applying judicial review to tax legislation. This stands in contrast to the use of the scrutiny doctrine, which struggles to adapt itself to the flexibility and balances that tax laws require.

Languages : Hebrew – native, Spanish – proficient, France – elementary.

Bio:  Shajan Kreuter is a PhD student at the University of Freiburg in Germany. He studied law at the University of Frankfurt and spent his clerkship at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt. 

Shajan Kreuter is admitted to the bar and works at Sullivan Cromwell LLP in Frankfurt.

Research Focus:  In his PhD thesis Kreuter portrays the regulation of crypto assets in Germany, the EU and the US . The thesis examines the current regulation of crypto assets in Germany and the EU and analyses the digital finance package of the European Commission which contains three draft legislations constituting the first comprehensive regulation of crypto assets in the EU . Furthermore, the thesis describes the current regulatory landscape and developments in the US and compares the EU draft legislation with the US regulatory regime.

Languages:  German (native), French (proficient)

Bio:  Linda Meister is a PhD student at the Department for Private International Law, International Civil Litigation and Comparative Law at the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen in Germany. After her state exam in 2020 which included a specialization on Private International Law, International Civil Litigation and Comparative Law, she started working as a Research, Teaching and Grading Assistant at the University of Tuebingen. In this capacity she has taught courses in Public Law, Private Law and Private International Law. During her undergraduate and doctoral studies, she also participated successfully in the certificate programs “Law, Ethics, Economics” and “Human Rights Law in Practice”.

Her interests include Principles of Private International Law, International Civil Litigation, Comparative Law and Human Rights Law.

Research Focus:  Linda’s research focuses on the principle of neutrality in Private International Law. This area of law determines which country’s law is applicable in a case with connections to multiple countries. The classical European approach aims to treat all legal systems equally and abstracts the question of applicable law from the content of the different laws. This abstraction is called the principle of neutrality. However, this principle is being challenged. Developments in Europe and especially teachings in the US focus on a just outcome rather than a neutral decision. Linda tries to substantiate the principle of neutrality and assess deviating developments.

Languages:  German (native), French (intermediate), Spanish (intermediate), Turkish (elementary)

Bio:  Zhiruo Ni is a PhD candidate in the College of Comparative Law, China University of Political Science and Law, in Beijing. Prior to her PhD studies, she received a Master of Laws at King’s College London and a Bachelor of Laws at the University of International Business and Economics in China. In 2017 she was a Visiting Student at Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv (Israel). From 2016 to 2018, she held legal internships in the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission ( CIETAC ) and JunHe LLP , China. Her research interests mainly include Antitrust Law and Comparative Law.

Research Focus:  Ni’s research focuses on antitrust regulation toward vertical integration. She has found that antitrust law is getting primary attention in China, but there is still a lack of Law & Economics studies and relevant cases, due to a long-term regulatory and judicial oversight before the information age. As vertical integration has been a dominant characteristic of some major 

industries in the U.S., she hopes to build a comparative antitrust study on the issue between both jurisdictions, where the digital platforms could be the most suitable legal subjects for antitrust analysis at present.

Languages:  Chinese (native)

Bio:  Saba Pipia holds a Ph.D. degree in Law from Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia). He taught international law at several universities in Tbilisi, Georgia. Throughout his doctoral and post-doctoral studies, he was a visiting researcher at Michigan State University ( USA ), The Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Germany); The University of Groningen (The Netherlands); Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece); Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private International Law (Germany), Peace Palace Library (The Netherlands) and Jerusalem Institute of Justice (Israel). He was an invited lecturer at the University of Porto (Portugal) and the University of Iasi (Romania). He is a recipient of multiple research scholarships including from the Georgian National Scientific Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service ( DAAD ), European Commission (Erasmus program), and the US State Department (Fulbright Visiting Scholars program). Areas of his research include international humanitarian law, international criminal law, global animal law, and international environmental law. He has published academic publications in Georgia and abroad.

Research Focus:  Saba’s research project is about missing persons. He intends to study the issue of missing persons from all possible international legal angles and provide an analysis, which will be useful for various target groups, including academics, students, governments, and armed forces. Saba thinks that there is a need to develop the concept of ‘international law of missing persons’ and examine this multi-dimensional issue through the lens of various international law instruments to determine the body of law, that regulates the issue of missing persons, and which can be 

applied whenever there is a need to deal with missing persons. The most important goal of this research visit is to promote legal scholarship in the emerging field of international law – missing persons law – and eventually to produce an academic publication on this topic.

Languages : Georgian (native), Russian (limited working proficiency), Hebrew (elementary proficiency)

Bio:  Dr. Elena Pribytkova is a Lecturer in Law at Southampton Law School. She received a Doctor of the Science of Law ( J.S.D. ) degree from Columbia Law School and is a Habilitation candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Basel. She held various research and teaching appointments at leading universities and research institutes all over the world, including Columbia Law School, New York University School of Law, University of Oxford, European University Institute, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg University, Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, University of Basel, Radboud University Nijmegen, and National University of Singapore. She has more than fifty publications, including publications in top U.S. law reviews and internationally recognized peer-reviewed law journals, such as the  Chicago Journal of International Law ,  University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law ,  Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie ,  RphZ – Rechtsphilosophie – Zeitschrift für Grundlagen des Rechts , and  N.Y.U. Journal of International Law & Politics .

Research Focus:  Elena has worked extensively on individual and collective multidisciplinary research projects on theories of justice, human dignity, law and morality, governance, and human rights, in particular, socio-economic rights and their role in reducing poverty and inequality as well as in promoting social, global, and environmental justice, and sustainable development. Her current project  Towards a World of Accountability: Extraterritorial Obligations in the Area of Socio-Economic Rights from Philosophical, Legal and Practical Perspectives  pays special attention to human rights obligations of non-state actors. Her Habilitation monograph  A Decent Social Minimum in the Language of Human Rights  focuses on mechanisms for ensuring the social minimum guarantees in international, regional, and national orders.

Languages:  Russian (native speaker); English & German (fluent); French (intermediate); Slavic languages & Swiss German (basic knowledge)

Bio:  Sabrina Ragone (PhD) teaches comparative law at the University of Bologna’s Department of Political and Social Sciences, where she holds the post of Head of International Relations. She is also a member of the scientific committee of the Buenos Aires Campus and the excellence college of the University. She is Senior Research Affiliate of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she pursued her research between 2015 and 2017. Previously, she was a García Pelayo Fellow at the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales – Madrid (2012-2015) and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (2011-2012). She has taught comparative law in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina. 

She has collaborated with several competitive national research projects funded by the Italian and Spanish ministries of education as well as by research institutes in Latin America. Between 2018 and 2021 she was the PI of the Jean Monnet Module CRISES “Critical Risks for Integration and Solidarity in the European Space”, Erasmus+ Program. See:  https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/sabrina.ragone2/cv-en  

Research Focus:  Sabrina Ragone’s research comparatively addresses constitutional adjudication, territorial organization, and the interaction between international and domestic laws. She deals with Latin American constitutionalism from a comparative perspective, taking into account its transnational dimension. Her book on constitutional adjudication on constitutional amendments was the first comprehensive assessment of the issue (“I controlli giurisdizionali sulle revisioni costituzionali” 2011 in Italian, 2012 in Spanish). She then focused on the core constitutional issues of European integration, publishing several pieces on the issue, among them, the edited book “Managing the Euro Crisis. National EU policy coordination in the debtor countries”, Routledge 2018, and the volume “Parlamentarismos y crisis económica: afectación de los encajes constitucionales en Italia y España”, Bosch, 2020.

Languages : Italian (native); Spanish (proficient); German (good); French (intermediate); Portuguese (working knowledge); Catalan (working knowledge) 

Bio : Lea Schneider is a PhD student at the Institute for International Law and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. From 2020 to 2022, she served as Research and Teaching Assistant at the University of Zurich, where she taught courses and co-organized the 22nd Conference of Young Research Scholars in Public Law ( Junge Tagung Öffentliches Recht ) and co-edited the annual anthology for young legal researchers of the University of Zurich ( APARIUZ ). Prior to pursuing her PhD studies, she received an LL .M. in Transnational Law from King’s College London and a Master of Laws from the University of Zurich. Her interests include public international law, public law, international economic law, transnational law and human rights law.

Research Focus : Lea Schneider’s research centers on the regulatory landscape of transnational corporations ( TNC s) regarding human rights and environmental standards. In her PhD thesis she analyses what insights are gained from a transnational perspective on the regulatory landscape of TNC s. Schneider conceptualizes transnational law, along the lines of Peer Zumbansen, as a methodology. In her thesis, she claims, for example, that a transnational perspective allows us to gain an enhanced understanding of the role and functioning of international soft law-initiatives in this regulatory area.

Languages : German (native), French (proficient), Italian (elementary)

Bio:  Francesco Tumbiolo is a Ph.D. student in Legal Sciences at the University of Milan-Bicocca. He was awarded a doctoral scholarship for his research project about cryptocurrencies’ taxation. Francesco is also a teaching assistant at the University of Insubria (Como), where he graduated in law. He was admitted, ranking among the top five students, to the School of Specialization in Legal Professions of the University of Milan. After getting the specialization diploma, he passed the bar exam, and he is currently an attorney-at-law in Italy at a renowned tax law firm with branches in Rome and Milan.

Research Focus:  Francesco’s research focuses on cryptocurrencies’ taxation, especially from the Italian tax law point of view. However, he is now interested in giving his doctoral thesis a comparative perspective: his aim is to find what are the solutions adopted by different OECD members, like the US , to fix the same problems every country faces in taxing cryptocurrencies. Since they are in rapid development, he agrees that policymakers have to progress in considering cryptocurrencies’ tax implications in order to find a shared best practice.

Languages : Italian (native)

Bio : Wu Weiding is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Law of Renmin University of China ( RUC ). His areas of interest include corporate and securities law and arbitration law. He received his Bachelor of Laws degree and Juris Master degree respectively from China University of Political Science and Law ( CUPL ) and Peking University ( PKU ). Wu has participated in several research programs, such as “Research on Major Problems of Bankruptcy of Listed Companies” and “Improvement of Governance Mechanism of Listed Companies”. He has worked as an intern in Beijing JunZeJun (Changsha) Law Firm, Beijing Tiantong Law Firm and the People’s Court of Changping District. Currently, he is an editor of  Renming University Law Review . Wu has also already published a number of academic papers in core journals of China.

Research Focus : Wu has been focusing on social enterprises in the form of companies in China. Social enterprises are the types of enterprises pursuing both profits and public welfare. In China, there are a large number of social enterprises taking the form of companies. The core problem is that in China, the company is an organizational form purely pursuing profit-making goals, and Company Law of the People’s Republic of China does not provide any strong institutional guarantee for social enterprises to achieve social goals. Questions to be addressed in Wu’s research are as follows: Why do an increasing number of social enterprises exist in the form of companies in China? How can these social enterprises achieve their social goals without “mission drift”?

Languages:  Chinese (native) and German (elementary)

Bio:  Ms.Xiaodan Zhu is a Chinese professor specialized in International Tax Law. In this capacity, Xiaodan works at the Law School, Dalian Ocean University, where she also is the director of both Bachelor and Master Degree programs in Law. Prof. Zhu obtained a Ph.D. in International Tax Law from Xiamen University of China in 2013. She has been a Grotius Research Scholar of the University of Michigan Law School during 2015 and 2016. Her teaching activities include courses on international economic law, China’s tax law, and international tax law. Her writings (including journal articles and monographs) have appeared in many Chinese and English academic publications. Moreover, Professor Zhu is also a brilliant practical expert in tax law. She has been seconded to the Department of Tax Policy, Ministry of Finance of China in 2020, and she has been a part-time tax lawyer for almost six years in China.

Bio:  Zhiyu Li is an Assistant Professor in Law and Policy at Durham Law School and a Fellow at the Durham Research Methods Centre. She holds undergraduate degrees in law and economics from the East China University of Political Science and Law and a J.S.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Zhiyu’s research investigates issues that lie at the intersection of law and policy, with a particular emphasis on the role of courts in democratic and authoritarian regimes. The findings of her research have been published in or accepted by U.S. and international journals, including the  Harvard International Law Journal , the  Columbia Journal of Asian Law , and the  Cornell International Law Journal , and presented at various fora, such as the Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum and the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law.

Research Focus:  Zhiyu’s current research asks whether the rejection of the separation of powers principle in socialist jurisdictions makes it easier for courts to take on extrajudicial functions and exercise influence in ways that are salutary but forbidden to their liberal democratic cousins.

At Michigan, she will work on a joint project that aims to study cognitive biases of legal professionals and lay persons through survey experiments fielded on judges and university students. The project findings are expected to have normative implications for institutional choices in the civil and criminal justice system. She will also further her work on specialized judicial empowerment.

Languages:  Mandarin Chinese (native)

Bio:  Sarah Zimmermann is a PhD student at the Max-Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) where she also works at the European and Comparative Legal History department.

Zimmermann studied Law and European Studies in Mainz (Germany), Maastricht (Netherlands) and Dijon (France). Prior to pursuing her PhD, she obtained the German State Exams and a Masters (Maîtrise en Droit) from the University of Dijon with a focus on European economic law. She also holds a joint LL .M in international private law and European Law from the universities of Mainz and Dijon. She has received various scholarships during her studies and for her PhD research. During her legal clerkship she worked at the Frankfurt office of WilmerHale obtaining professional experience in the field of regulatory affairs and European Law.

Her interests include European law, procedural law, comparative law and administrative law.

Research Focus:  Zimmermann’s PhD research focuses on the procedural law of the Courts of the European Union. It looks at the emergence of these rules in the 1950s from a historical and comparative legal perspective. She is evaluating to which extent the ECJ procedural rules during that time were comparable to the national procedural rules of the member states and to those of international courts. She is using sources from the archives of the European institutions and the relevant ministries of the founding states and seeks to give insight into one of the first decision making processes of the Community.

Languages : German (native), French (proficient), Dutch (elementary)

Bio:  Alain is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the School of Law, University of Glasgow ( UK ). Alain holds graduate degrees in Philosophy ( MS c, London School of Economics), History ( MA , Graduate Institute) and Law ( LL .M., Toronto). He was awarded his doctoral degree at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. His doctoral dissertation was published as a monograph with Routledge ( The ECHR and Human Rights Theory ). Alain subsequently obtained three post-doctoral fellowships funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the European University Institute in Florence (Max Weber Fellowship) and the University of Oslo (PluriCourts Centre of Excellence).

Research Focus:  Alain’s research aims to reconstruct and evaluate the practices of constitutional law, human rights law and international law from the perspective of normative theory. In particular, Alain has examined the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, UN treaty bodies and the International Criminal Court. His research has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals such as  International Journal of Constitutional Law  (2019, 2022),  Global Constitutionalism  (2016, 2021, 2022),  Ratio Juris  (2019),  Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy  (2019, 2021),  Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence  (2016) and  Criminal Law and Philosophy  (2018), among others. Alain is also currently Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oslo (PluriCourts Center for Excellence) for a two-year project (2021-23) studying the nexus between theories of populism and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. His monograph on the topic is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Languages : English, French, German, Spanish

Andrew Cecchinato is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School and the School of History at the University of St Andrews. He is PI of the Horizon 2020 project on John Selden’s Harmonic Jurisprudence. A European Interpretation of English Legal History . Previously, he was a postdoc in St Andrews, working on the ERC project Civil Law, Common Law, Customary Law: Consonance Divergence and Transformation in Western Europe from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries . 

Andrew is a book review editor for the American Journal of Legal History. He has received scholarships from the Max-Planck-Institute für europäische Rechtsgeschichte and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. He has also been a visiting researcher at the Robbins Collection in Civil and Religious Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the Library of Congress. He studied law at the University of Trento, where his Ph.D. on The Legal Education of Thomas Jefferson won the faculty prize. 

Research Focus

Andrew’s main research aims to repurpose the idea of Europe by studying how the seventeenth-century jurist, historian, and Hebraist John Selden harmonized the history of English law and the authority of the European legal tradition. His project will center on Selden’s effort to preserve and harmonize the history of English law within the inclusive order of nations recognized by a distinct reading of medieval and modern European jurisprudence. The research will thus focus on the cogent yet overlooked reasoning by which Selden proved that no law, however discrete, can rightfully be understood if isolated from the continuum of legal experience. 

English and Italian (native), French and German (elementary)

Apostolos Chronopoulos is Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London.

Apostolos has studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He continued his studies at Queen Mary University of London ( LLM Lond.) and the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich ( LLM Eur. and Dr. Jur.). During his Ph.D. studies, he was supported by a scholarship from the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition, and Tax Law (now MPI for Innovation and Competition). At the postdoctoral level, he has received scholarships that allowed him to conduct research as a visiting scholar at Stanford Law School and as an invited overseas researcher at the Institute of Intellectual Property in Tokyo, Japan.

His research interests span the broader field of intellectual property and competition law. Currently, his focus is on US and EU trademark law, unfair competition law, patent law, economic analysis of intellectual property law, comparative intellectual property law, the relationship of intellectual property law and general private law, the interface between Intellectual property and antitrust law.

His latest publications include: Exceptions to Trade Mark Exhaustion: Inalienability Rules for the Protection of Reputational Economic Value [2021] 43(6) European Intellectual Property Review 352-365; Reconstructing the Complete Patent Bargain: The Doctrine of Equivalents , [2020] Intellectual Property Quarterly, Issue 2, 138-160; Strict Liability and Negligence in Copyright Law: Fair Use as Regulation of Activity Levels , 97 Nebraska Law Review 384-468 (2018).

English, German, Greek

Viviana Galletto Farro graduated from the Catholic University of Uruguay with a Juris Doctor degree. She has been a professional judge in Uruguay since 2014, and she is currently nominated by the Supreme Court of Justice of this country for an upcoming promotion. She has attended on a wide range of cases in both civil and criminal law matters, gaining experience as a judge.

She is a contract law specialist and holds an LL .M degree in Contract Law. In addition, she is pursuing an LL .M degree in Criminal Procedure Law, while she currently works on her Ph.D. thesis in Legal and Research Sciences from the Catholic University of Argentine.

She is a graduate teaching assistant in civil and procedural law at the Catholic University of Uruguay. Her writings have been published in numerous legal publications. She has received multiple scholarships and awards, including the Fulbright Scholar grant to study at the University of Michigan Law School as a research scholar.

The purpose of the research will be to identify the relevant legal standards for the admission, evaluation and sufficiency of the evidence presented by the parties in the intermediate stage of the criminal process, in order to discover the truth and achieve effective, fast and fair solutions.

The main focus will be to analyze the objective parameters that constitute the rules of evidence by which judges issue their rulings, so these criteria could be used as a framework in the Uruguayan Criminal Procedure System during the intermediate stage of trials.

Spanish (native), Italian (elementary). 

Jaka Kukavica is a Ph.D. Researcher at European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His Ph.D. project comparatively examines consensus analysis as an interpretative method in various multilevel polities. He is also working as a researcher on “The Court of Justice in the Archives” project at the Academy of European Law and the “Judicial Networks between Supreme Courts in Europe” project led by Prof. Mathias Siems. Before commencing his doctoral project, Kukavica studied law at Ljubljana and Cambridge. He is the Head of Section for European Law at the European Journal of Legal Studies and he served as an Editor of the Cambridge International Law Journal in the past. He has received multiple scholarships and awards, including the Mary Higgins Scholarship and the Lilian Knowles Prize awarded by Girton College, University of Cambridge.

Kukavica’s doctoral research examines the relationship between the structure of multilevel polities and the types of consensus analysis courts use when interpreting legal norms. Kukavica argues that different types of consensus analysis imply different understandings of the value of state autonomy. On these grounds, he examines whether courts use consensus analysis in a way that fits the structure of the multilevel system in which they operate. In particular, he focuses on the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court, the Court of Justice of the EU , the European Court of Human Rights, and the UN Human Rights Committee.

Slovenian (native), Serbo-Croatian, and Italian (proficient)

Caroline Maciel is a doctoral researcher in open data of the Quality of Law Research Clinic, which is a member of the International Association of Legislation. She works as Regulatory Affairs and Government Relations at Stone Co (financial and software solutions) and is interested in Big Techs entrance in financial markets and how regulation should approach this matter. She studied Law at UFMG (Brazil) and University of Leeds ( UK ) and won two of the university’s prizes (best in civil and procedure law). Her master degree Institutions and Public Policies (Arraes: 2019) won two awards. She was a Research Fellow at AI Labs in a project on artificial intelligence to understand Congress. Her teaching and academic activities include courses on law and technology, constitutional law, administrative law and legal theory. Her writings have been published in numerous peer-reviewed publications, some in english.

Caroline’s research addresses how technology, such as machine learning-based systems, can be used to improve regulatory and legislative risk management. She argues that Brazil has substantial unequal access to public data and political players. Given this, tools to automatically process, analyze and categorize data, identify trends and predict best courses of legal action could change how advocacy is done, reducing this asymmetry. She analyzes some of these situations in financial market, as Big Tech’s started to provide payment services in Brazil. She chose to collect improvements from the US private and public sector because it is one of the front-runners in AI and algorithmic transparency, which can be used in Regulatory Impact Assessment Brazilian models. She evaluates how to decipher the government’s decision-making process patterns (without losing the political aspect) and the possible benefits to the democratic and economic development. 

Portuguese (native), English (proficient) and Spanish (intermediate)

Veena Manikulam is a PhD student at the Institute for International Law and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. From 2019 to 2021, she served as Research and Teaching Assistant at the University of Zurich, where she taught several courses and co-authored three articles in the area of international economic law. Prior to pursuing her PhD studies, she received an LL .M. in Transnational Law from King’s College London and a Master of Laws from the University of Zurich. In 2016, she was an exchange student at the National Law School of India University. Her interests include international economic law, transnational law and human rights law.

Veena Manikulam’s research centres on the reform of international investment law. In her PhD thesis she addresses to what extent the concept of investor accountability has been incorporated in investment law. Based on the insufficient adoption of investor accountability in existing investment agreements, her research focuses on the question how mechanisms to enforce substantive standards (including human rights, labour and environmental standards) could be designed to adequately incorporate the notion of investor accountability in investment law. Manikulam argues that a transnational approach to this question presents the chance to propose innovative enforcement mechanisms.

German (native), Malayalam (native), French (proficient), Hindi (limited working proficiency), Arabic (limited working proficiency)

Marcin Menkes is an Associate Professor at Warsaw School of Economics, in the Department of Business Law, where he also heads the Post-Graduate Studies of Law and Economics of the Capital Market. He is a member of the International Law Association Committee on the Rule of Law in International Investment Law and the Investor-States Dispute Settlement Academic Forum. He has held visiting fellowships at top universities including Cornell University, Cambridge University, Università di Torino, Università degli Studi di Firenze, and Università di Bologna.

His research interests include international investment arbitration, international monetary and financial matters, sovereign debt restructuring, sovereign immunities, and economic sanctions. He has published four books, over 100 scientific articles, and more than 1,000 blog posts, newspaper articles, etc.

Besides his academic work, he is also Of Counsel in Queirtius, an international litigation and arbitration law firm.

Menkes’s recent piecemeal projects are part of a larger research agenda on the evolution of public international law. His overarching hypothesis is that current diagnoses of the Westaphalian international order crisis are superficial and address only symptoms, not the roots of change.

While at Michigan Law School, he will examine the extent to which blockchain carries the potential to go beyond what has been debated and analyzed so far: to undermine the legal personality of states, to recognize the personality of MNE s, to open up the catalog of sources of law, and, ultimately, to undermine the foundations of the entire system.

Polish (native), French (proficient), Italian (proficient), Spanish (Intermediary), Dutch (elementary)

Zarina Mussakhojayeva is a lawyer specializing in international trade law and compliance, focusing particularly on regulatory compliance, international sanctions, and anti-bribery regulations. Zarina has worked for multinational companies, advising on corporate compliance and governance issues in the areas of Antitrust, U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, U.K. Bribery Act, Antiboycott and economic sanctions. Zarina is an experienced lawyer qualified to practice law in Kazakhstan with professional experience covering matters related to mining operations, corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry.

Zarina received her B.A. in law from Kazakh Humanitarian Law University in 2006, where she received the University President’s Scholarship award. In 2008 she obtained her LL .M. degree at Duke University School of Law. Zarina was awarded a prestigious Kazakhstan Government-sponsored International Scholarship to pursue her studies at Duke. Zarina studied at American University in Washington, D.C. and Minnesota State University as an exchange student under the U.S. Department of State “Freedom Support Act” Fellowship Program.

Zarina’s research focuses on regulatory and legal aspects of implementing global compliance practices in Russia and Kazakhstan. The research is intended to identify regulatory compliance challenges faced by multinational corporations operating in the region. It is aimed at analyzing applicable regulatory environment in these post-Soviet countries, understanding available compliance function and established practices, and investigating recent FCPA enforcement actions. The research identifies the OFAC -imposed economic sanctions and Russian countersanctions and conflict between Russian antimonopoly legislation and U.S. anti-boycott regulations as key areas for further examination. In addition, some of the essential legal concepts are proposed to overcome the identified challenges.

Kazakh (native), Russian (native), and English (fluent)

Azusa Ogasawara has been a public prosecutor in Japan for six years. She graduated from Kyoto University Law School with a Juris Doctor degree. She has worked on a wide range of cases in both the investigation and trial departments, gaining experience as a practicing lawyer. She was recommended by the Public Prosecutors Office in Japan and is currently studying at the University of Michigan Law School as a research scholar.

Azusa’s research investigates legislative and operational issues related to laws against money laundering. In recent years, Japan has seen an increase in the amount of money laundering cases. However, the reaction of Japan to these crimes has not been fulfilling due to the lack of our experience in this field; thus, Japan must consider further strengthening its regulations while referring to the efforts of other countries. She chose these issues, because she believed that studying in the U.S., where research in this field is more advanced, would provide meaningful results for Japanese criminal justice.

Japanese (native)

Aparna Singh is a lawyer licensed to practice in India. She holds law degrees from the University of Cambridge ( U.K. ) and the University of Delhi (India).

After graduating from Cambridge with an LL .M. degree in International Law, she joined Fietta LLP (London). At Fietta LLP , she assisted in ongoing investor-state arbitrations and even worked on several maritime law issues including, but not limited to, extent of the territorial waters of archipelagic states.

Prior to pursuing the LL .M. program, Aparna practiced law in India for four years. As a Senior Associate at a premier law firm, she represented private parties and government authorities in cases covering diverse areas of law, ranging from government regulation to cross-border transactions. Aparna also had the opportunity to work on several international arbitrations and received favorable awards for the firm’s clients.

Before coming to the University of Michigan Law School, Aparna practiced as an Arbitration Consultant in India, advising clients on international and domestic arbitration issues. 

Aparna’s current research includes a comparative analysis of regulatory regimes adopted in developed and developing countries to promote cross-border transactions and foreign direct investment. She intends to expand the scope of this research by looking at regulatory practices adopted by the U.S. and how India’s recent reforms stand in comparison. In light of India’s recent termination of many of its Bilateral Investment Treaties ( BIT s), this research will also encompass India’s dispute resolution system, both within and without the new Model BIT , and how it can be improved to meet the challenges ahead.

Hindi (native), Spanish (basic/learning)

John Trajer is a doctoral researcher in law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Over the course of his PhD, he has been a visiting fellow at the Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and at the Dickson Poon School of Law (King’s College London). Prior to commencing his doctoral degree, he obtained a BA from the University of Oxford, a Joint MA from the universities of Göttingen and Groningen, and an LLM from the European University Institute. He has acquired professional experience in the field of migration and refugee law at a range of NGO s and international organizations, including the AIRE Centre (Advice on Individual Rights in Europe), the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, and the Council of Europe.

John’s doctoral research explores the scope of states’ protective duties towards trafficked

persons under international and regional European law. Specifically, it examines the conditions under which host states are obliged to ensure access to rehabilitative assistance for trafficked migrants, focusing on points of intersection between anti-trafficking, human rights, and refugee law. Beyond his PhD project, John is interested generally in the fields of migration, criminal, and international human rights law. At the European University Institute, he is one of the coordinators of the Migration Working Group (Migration Policy Centre) and an active participant of the Human and Fundamental Rights Working Group (Law Department). He is also a member of the Human Trafficking Research Network based at Queen’s University Belfast.

John is proficient in Hungarian and Italian, while he speaks Dutch and German at an upper-intermediate level.

I am Professor of International Law and Co-Director of  PluriCourts – Centre for the Study of the Legitimate Roles of the Judiciary in the Global Order , University of Oslo, Norway. I have been Director of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo. I was Co-chair of the International Law Association’s Study Group on the ‘Content and Evolution of the Rules of Interpretation’ and am Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law, Luxembourg. I have been a member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law.

I will give a special course as part of the 2022 Hague Academy Winter Course on ‘Deference by International Courts and Tribunals to National Organs’. I have committed to write a book on the basis of the lectures, to be published in the Academy’s  Collected Courses . I am looking forward to writing the book in the research environment provided by the University of Michigan.

English (some German and French)

Thomas Verellen is Assistant Professor in European Union and International Law at Utrecht University (Netherlands) and a Research Fellow at the Institute for European Law, KU Leuven (Belgium). Thomas is an expert in EU and comparative foreign relations law and has a particular interest in the impact of geopolitical change on the governance of EU trade and investment policy. 

Thomas defended his PhD entitled ‘ EU Foreign Relations Federalism. A Comparison with the United States, Canada and Belgium’ at KU Leuven in September 2019. From 2018 to 2020, Thomas practiced EU and international trade law at the Brussels office of Bird & Bird LLP . Thomas has held visiting positions at the University of Michigan Law School (2016-2017) and the Université de Montréal (2015) and was a trainee in the chambers of Professor Koen Lenaerts, President of the Court of Justice of the EU  (2015).

At Michigan, Thomas will start a comparative research project on legal and political accountability mechanisms in EU and U.S. trade and investment policy, and he will work on the book version of his PhD, which will be published in 2022 as part of Oxford University Press’ Comparative Constitutionalism series. In addition, Thomas will teach European Union Law at Michigan during the 2022 Winter Term.

Dutch, French and English

Dr. Eddie Wei is an International and Comparative Law Research Scholar at the University of Michigan Law School under the mentorship of Professors Catharine MacKinnon and Kimberly Thomas. During his stay in Michigan, he is also a postdoctoral fellow in the China- US Scholar Program, which is administered by the International Institute of Education. Dr. Wei received his PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge and JSD from City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include judges’ gender and sentencing, sexual abuse and violence, and feminist judgments project. He received the Graduate Student Paper Award from the Division on Women and Crime, American Society of Criminology in 2019, as well as the Jiang-Land-Wang Outstanding Student Paper Award from the Association of Chinese Criminology and Criminal Justice in the same year. His publications can be found in peer-reviewed journals, such as Feminist Criminology, Feminist Legal Studies, British Journal of Criminology, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, and International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology . He has been a member of the All China Lawyers Association since 2008.

Legal studies worldwide have documented the ways in which sentences of rape are influenced by victims’ relationships with offenders. The systematic failure to effectively sanction private sexual violence speaks to the influence of extra-legal factors on judges’ decision-making processes. Nevertheless, what typically has been found in the literature on the categorization of rape offenders is the dichotomy between strangers and non-strangers to victims. Such classification is problematic because of the distinct nature of the relationships captured in acquaintance rape. I will use a more refined categorization of victim-offender relationships to examine the predictive power of relationship type in sentencing outcomes.

Mandarin (native) and Cantonese (proficient)

Sonya Ziaja is an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she teaches Environmental Law; Climate Adaptation, Law and Equity; and Property. Ziaja holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Arizona; M.Sc. in Water Science, Policy and Management from the University of Oxford; and J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Ziaja’s research interests focus on the overlapping areas of environmental governance and law, technology and society: How can environmental law and institutions sustainably adjust to rapidly changing bio-geophysical conditions and societal demands associated with climate change? And with what consequences for equity and democratic participation? Her approach to these questions draws on her interdisciplinary background in geography, water policy and law, as well as her practical knowledge of energy regulation.

Prior to entering academia, Ziaja worked in energy regulation at the California Public Utilities Commission and was the research lead for the Water, Energy, Climate Nexus at the California Energy Commission. She was a lead author of California’s Fourth Climate Assessment. Her research has informed the climate adaptation strategy of the U.S. National Parks Service and the first climate adaptation regulation of investor-owned energy utilities in California.

Dr. Ziaja’s current research project examines an emerging paradox in climate adaptation and equity. Climate adaptation is necessarily dependent on algorithm assisted decision making. These algorithmic tools are new fora for deliberation and environmental lawmaking. But these necessary tools also embed value laden assumptions and biases that make them counter to democratic participation and equity. This project is based on multiple years of qualitative research and detailed analysis of two cases where decision support software has informed climate adaptation for water and energy sectors. Through these case studies, Ziaja’s research provides a novel framework for evaluating procedural and substantive equity in algorithmic tools. Early versions of this research benefitted from discussions at the University of Columbia’s Sabin Colloquium for Innovative Environmental Scholarship and the University of Michigan Law School’s Junior Scholars Conference. Ziaja’s article, How Algorithm Assisted Decision  Making is Influencing Environmental Law and Climate Adaptation , is forthcoming in volume 48 of Ecology Law Quarterly .

Lorenzo Giovanni Luisetto is a Ph.D. student in Comparative and European legal studies from the University of Trento in Italy. Prior to receiving his scholarship to pursue his Ph.D, studies, he received an M.A. in law at the University of Trento. Luisetto received the Giorgio Ghezzi Award - Mention of Merit in 2018 for the adoption of a comparative and multidisciplinary method in his master’s thesis, entitled  “Working Conditions at “Amazon”: a Comparison between the United States and Italy.”  In 2018 he was a Visiting Researcher at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations ( AFL - CIO ), Washington D.C. ( USA ), and in 2020 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven ( BE ), where he worked at the Institute for Labour Law. His research interests include Comparative Labor and Employment Law, Antitrust Law and EU  Law.

Luisetto’s research focuses on the interaction between Antitrust Law and Labor and Employment Law. He is conducting a comparative study between the United States’ and the European Union’s models of anti-competition law and their application to labor issues. His research question is based on the ineffectiveness of both Labor and Employment Law in protecting workers and the possibility of antitrust principles providing better protections for workers in different kinds of labor markets. Luisetto argues that antitrust should not only focus on consumer welfare but also on other important interests, such as the welfare of workers. More generally, he believes the goals of anti-competition law should be reconsidered in order to expand protection for labor. 

Francesco Marotta is a doctoral student in commercial law at the University of Padua. He was awarded a doctoral scholarship in 2019 after submitting a research project aimed at investigating the main legal issues posed by the Italian insolvency law reform. After graduating in Law at the same university in 2017, he worked for a year and a half as a deputy Public Prosecutor’s assistant in the section of the Prosecutor’s office specialized in economic, financial and tax crimes. He currently holds lessons and seminars for students at the university during the course of Commercial Law and Business Crisis Law. Marotta published academic articles/papers on insolvency and commercial law in various Italian law reviews. He is also a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute (International member) and the International Association of Restructuring, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Professionals ( INSOL ). 

Marotta’s research interests lie primarily within international comparison of insolvency laws, with a particular emphasis on the different legislative policies aimed at preventing insolvency and promoting business rehabilitation. Marotta’s research project analyses, with a comparative approach, the differences between the Italian and American legal regimes governing the prevention of business crisis. His purpose is to verify if the U.S. system is the most suitable for preventing insolvency without jeopardizing companies themselves. In this way, it will be possible to draw several inspirations to improve the Italian insolvency law, especially considering the high percentage of businesses that will probably experience financial difficulties due to the outbreak of the COVID -19 pandemic.

An Guohui is a Ph.D. candidate majoring in law and economics at China University of Political Science and Law. He focuses on economic analysis of law, especially administrative law and tort law. He studied law in China-Euro School of Law and received a Juris Master. Before he started his Ph.D. program, he worked in the China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation, Chinese official Export Credit Agency. He previously was in an internship at the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) as a temporary consultant.

The social disciplining on various wrong doings is a new and fast-growing means of regulation. The wrong doings consist of criminal offense, administrative offense, contempt of court, bad faith in civil cases, etc. These are supposed to reduce the social transaction cost by reinforcing the authority and enforcement of law. As a very new regulation with universal influences, the disciplining is lack of prudent demonstration. Especially, an economic analysis needs to be used to deliberate the cost and benefit of the regulation. Due process in the disciplining is also a key issue.

Janis Beckedorf is a fellow of the doctoral research group “Digital Law” at Heidelberg University, an interdisciplinary institution of the Faculty of Law and Computer Science carrying out fundamental research to prepare and accompany the development of legal expert systems. Janis studied law at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany and at the University of Michigan during the fall term of 2014. Currently, he works on his PhD thesis and conducts a research project on “Complex Societies and the Growth of the Law” with three other scholars. Janis’ research is funded by the Foundation of German Economy (Stiftung der deutschen Wirtschaft) and the State of Baden-Württemberg. He is co-founder of iusio, a company providing customized software to law firms and insolvency administrators. 

Tax law is regularly criticized for being too complex. What does complexity mean in respect of law, how can it be quantified and what insights can be gained about law? To answer these questions, the research uses insights from economics, systems theory and network science. The first objective is to elaborate a definition of legal complexity. The second objective is to develop new methods to measure legal complexity laying a focus on network science. As underlying data for these approaches, the research uses federal laws of the United States and Germany as well as court decisions.

Won Kyung Chang is an associate professor in the Scranton Honors Program at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea. She received a joint doctoral degree (Ph.D. in Law and Social Science) from the Maurer School of Law and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Bloomington.

Her research addresses a broad range of issues related to society, law, and public administration, including legal consciousness and legal culture, alternative dispute resolution, collaborative public administration, biomedical law and ethics, legal interpreting, and school violence. She has published around 30 articles in journals of law and public administration, such as  Asian Journal of Law and Society ,  Canadian Journal of Law and Society , and  Public Administrative Review . She also serves as a member of the Conflict Management Committee in the Ministry of Justice, Republic of Korea, and as a member of the board of directors in the Korean Society for the Sociology of Law and the Asian Women Law Association.

Dr. Chang’s main research question has always been how to design a legal apparatus that gives a sense that the justice system is, in fact, just. In searching for answers, she studied different concepts of justice—procedural, distributive, restorative, and relational—in alternative disputes resolution, public participation in administrative procedure, and biomedical law and ethics. Currently, she is investigating the institutionalization and evolution of American class actions, a project she believes will provide a basis for analyzing the mobilization of collectivized disputes in South Korea, and, ultimately, contribute to elaborating the theory of interaction between social transition and legal systems.

Lukáš Hrdlička is a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague and a former bills drafter working for the Ministry of Finance. Lukáš was asked to draft a bill implementing the EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (“ ATAD ”), thus becoming the author of the first rules dealing with hybrid mismatches enacted in the Czech Republic. He was also a member of the team drafting the first exit tax and CFC rules in the Czech Republic.

Regarding his studies, Lukáš is the principal investigator of the “International Co-operation in Tax Matters” research project funded by the Grant Agency of the Charles University and a researcher of several other research projects. His article about loopholes in the ATAD ’s CFC rules won the faculty prize and led to an amendment of a proposed bill implementing the ATAD . Lukáš is a co-author of a commentary to the Income Tax Act and a recipient of the prestigious Hlávka Foundation scholarship.

Lukáš’ research encompasses both taxation and financial regulations, but his visit to the University of Michigan Law School shall be focused rather on tax policy, income taxation, and, particularly, international taxation from the US and EU perspective, e.g. hybrid mismatch rules, CFC rules. In his current research, Lukáš analyzes the impact of the OECD anti- BEPS project on the European tax system and how the proposed and/or enacted EU rules implementing this project should be amended to become more effective and bring a greater fairness to the European tax system.

Dr. Constantin Hruschka works as a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich since November 2017. He is part of the Research Initiative of the Max Planck Society in “Challenges of Migration, Integration and Exclusion” (for further information see:  https://www.eth.mpg.de/4397290/wimi ). 

Before fully returning to academia, he had inter alia worked as head of the protection department at the Swiss Refugee Council (2014-2017) and as a lawyer for UNHCR , the UN Refugee Agency (2004-2014) in Nuremberg and Geneva. Dr. Hruschka studied law, history and philosophy in Würzburg, Poitiers and Paris. He holds a PhD in history from the university of Würzburg and a maîtrise en histoire from Université Paris IV (Sorbonne). In addition, he is a fully qualified lawyer and has passed his bar exam in 2002. 

He is teaching European Law and European Asylum Law as well as Human Rights Law mainly at the Universities in Germany and Switzerland. 

His current research project is focused on responsibility sharing mechanisms in the asylum context from a regional and global perspective. He looks into the structural challenges of regional and global asylum governance as well as into the compatibility of existing schemes with the 1951 Convention and the human rights standards. This focus derives from his longstanding research on the Common European Asylum System and on the 1951 Convention.  In addition to his research on refugee law, he is currently working on a research project looking at the access of European Union citizens to welfare in other EU Member States in cooperation with the University of Lausanne.  He has authored many publications on international, European, Swiss and German asylum and migration law inter alia he co-authored (with Francesco Maiani) a commentary on the Dublin III Regulation, is co-editing a comprehensive commentary on the Swiss migration law (5th edition 2019) and is the editor of the first German language commentary on the 1951 Convention (forthcoming 2020).

Niamh Kinchin is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, University of Wollongong, NSW , Australia. Niamh teaches Administrative Law, Constitutional Law and Refugee Law. From 2008-14 she was as a sessional lecturer at the University of Wollongong and the University of New South Wales ( UNSW ), teaching a variety of subjects including Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Torts and Contracts Law. Prior to teaching, she worked at the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal as a legal officer. Niamh was admitted as a legal practitioner to the Supreme Court of NSW in 2002. She holds a Bachelor of Social Science from University of Newcastle, a Bachelor of Laws (Hons Class 1) from Western Sydney University, a Masters of Administrative Law and Policy from University of Sydney and a PhD from UNSW . The title of Niamh’s PhD is ‘Accountability in the Global Space: Plurality, Complexity and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’.

Niamh’s primary research interests are in global accountability and administrative justice, administrative decision-making within the refugee context and constitutional interpretation within the international and Australian settings. Her current research includes projects on the potential and risks of artificial intelligence in refugee status determination, the accountability of UNHCR in a time of Global Compacts, the interpretation of the constitutions of international organizations, NGO participation in the United Nations ( UN ) and the evolution of constitutional principles in Australia. In December 2018, Niamh published a monograph with Edward Elgar Publishing ( UK ) focusing upon Administrative Justice within the UN .

Andreas Th. Müller is Full Professor at the Department of European Law and Public International Law of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He studied law and philosophy at the Universities of Innsbruck, Strasbourg and Yale Law School. He has been a regular Visiting Professor at the University of Alcalá, Spain, the Universidad Panamericana, Mexico, as well as Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. In 2009/2010, he clerked for Judges Abdul G. Koroma and Bruno Simma at the International Court of Justice. His habilitation thesis dealt with Effet direct. The Direct Effect of EU Law. He is the principal investigator of the research project “Permissive Rules in Public International Law”, funded by the FWF (Austrian Science Fund). His teaching activities include courses on public international law, EU law, constitutional law, asylum and migration law and legal philosophy. 

Müller’s research focuses on international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international and European migration and asylum law, EU constitutional law and questions of legal philosophy and legal theory. His current research project starts from the observation that lawyers are trained to focus on rules ordering or prohibiting a certain conduct. However, numerous examples for permissive rules can be found also in public international law. The research project seeks to identify and systematize them and examine whether a distinction between thin and thick permissive rules may help to better conceptualize the architecture of contemporary public international law.

Tatjana Papić ( LL .B. Belgrade, LL .M. Connecticut, PhD Union Belgrade) is a professor of international law at the Union University Belgrade Law School. She teaches courses in public international law, international human rights law, and the European Court of Human Rights. She was a Visiting Professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law (2013). She is a former Head of Legal Department of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. Tatjana received Ron Brown Fellowship and OSI ’s Civil Society Scholar Award. She has published on questions of law of international responsibility, human rights, European Court of Human Rights and domestic reception of international law. Her work has been cited by the UN International Law Commission and the High Court of England and Wales.

Tatjana’s research addresses interactions between international law and domestic politics in post-conflict societies. Specifically, she explores impact of the international dispute settlement mechanisms – both on a dispute as such and on parties in the dispute – by focusing on highly political cases involving the states of the former Yugoslavia. Tatjana is, in particular, interested to see if, how and to what extent these proceedings have affected bilateral relations of the states involved, as well as their internal political dynamics and discourse. This will provide a background against which broader conclusions can be reached on the potential of legal means of settling international disputes in a post-conflict setting.

Louise Southalan is a lawyer working in the area of prison and detention health systems and is currently undertaking a  Churchill Fellowship  examining ways in which national agencies can best support state-based prison and jail mental health services.  As part of this travelling fellowship, she is delighted to be spending September at the University of Michigan Law School as a Michigan Grotius Research Scholar.

Louise works in the  Western Australian Department of Justice  on prison health projects and as a researcher with the  Justice Health Unit in the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health .  Her current projects with the University of Melbourne include undertaking a review for the  Australian National Mental Health Commission  on justice and health policies and strategies at federal and state levels, to identify ways in which they could better meet the mental health needs of justice-involved people.  Her previous roles include:

Working for  Australian Red Cross  monitoring conditions of detention in immigration detention facilities, 

In the  Western Australian Mental Health Commission , commissioning prison mental health services and developing forensic policy, and

Practicing as a lawyer.

She is very interested in international collaborations involving prison and detention health and would welcome opportunities to collaborate with colleagues from the University of Michigan.  Louise is a steering committee member of  WEPHREN , the Worldwide Prison Health Research and Engagement Network , a non-executive director of  HepatitisWA , and a collaborator on several international justice health projects.  She has a law degree and masters degrees in International Development and in Mental Health Policy and Services and is a graduate of the  Australian Institute of Company Directors .

Piotr Tereszkiewicz is a tenured Associate Professor of Private Law at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and a Senior Research Affiliate at the University of Leuven, Belgium. After obtaining his PhD at Jagiellonian University and a Magister Juris Degree at University of Oxford, Tereszkiewicz spent several years as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Heidelberg, working on comparative contract law, funded by German Research Council. At Jagiellonian University, Tereszkiewicz teaches core private law courses (including contracts, torts, succession) as well as international commercial contracts. His published works deal in particular with contract and commercial law, financial services regulation, mostly from a comparative, international and European perspective. Tereszkiewicz held visiting positions among others in Zurich, Ferrara and Bloomington (Mauer School of Law).

Tereszkiewicz’s research analyzes the practice and theory of commercial cooperation between manufacturers and their suppliers and dealers in the automobile industry in the United States and selected European countries. It explores what legal and non-legal (economic, social, cultural) factors determine the content of long-term cooperation between manufacturers and their suppliers and dealers. The central assumption of the study is that an in-depth examination of network governance within the automotive industry should build upon three major perspectives: the economic approach, the sociological approach and the contract law approach. In particular, a profound comparative study of contract law rules dealing with manufacturer-supplier and manufacturer-dealer relationships is undertaken.

Sina Van den Bogaert, Dr. jur. (2017), Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University (Frankfurt am Main), is a Legal Officer at the European Commission in Brussels, and a voluntary research affiliate at the KU Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. She is a former Research Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. Her doctoral dissertation on Segregation of Roma Children in Education (Brill Nijhoff: 2018) was awarded magna cum laude. The dissertation examines how the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (Council of Europe) and the Racial Equality Directive 2000/43/ EC (European Union) have contributed towards desegregation of Roma children in education in Europe. Sina has also published several articles on European Non-discrimination Law. 

Sina has been awarded a post-doc Fulbright and BAEF grant to study how US desegregation injunctions can be of inspiration for European judges when they seek to establish a proportionate, dissuasive and effective sanction mechanism in cases of school segregation. She argues that European judges should impose positive desegregation measures on infringers, if the effectiveness of the Racial Equality Directive is to be ensured. She identifies a recent shift in jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union towards ‘effective judicial protection’ for practicing rights derived from EU law, to the detriment of procedural autonomy of the EU Member States. She will focus on two intertwined developments: tackling domestic obstacles to effective enforcement and the possible creation of remedies otherwise unavailable in domestic law, based on the notion of ‘effectiveness’ and on Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Wang Qi is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Law of Renmin University of China ( RUC ). He studies commercial law as his major and works as a research assistant in the Research Center of Civil and Commercial Jurisprudence of RUC , which is funded by the Ministry of Education of China. Wang Qi received his master’s degree from RUC and bachelor’s degree from Wuhan University both in law. He was awarded the “Outstanding Graduate” by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission in 2017. He has been awarded a scholarship under the China Scholarship Council ( CSC ) to pursue study at the University of Michigan Law School. Wang Qi has participated in several research projects, including “The Theory and Practice of Dual-Class Share Structure”, “The Institutional Structure of the Initial Compensation of Sponsors”, and “The Regulation of Securities Investor Protection”. He has published a number of academic papers in numerous Chinese journals.

Wang’s research focuses on the securities investor protection in China. He chose to study this issue, because minority investors constitute the main body of China’s capital markets; therefore, the protection of their interests is closely related to the effective operation of the stock markets. By comparing the investor protection systems between China and the US , he analyzes the institutional deficiencies of investor protection in China based upon China’s Securities Law Amendment and the reform of the registration-based IPO system at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. He is exploring the approaches to improve the investor protection system in China.

Dr. Tadesse Kassa Woldetsadik is an Associate Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia) and Principal Advisor to the Ethiopian Investment Commission on Investment Policy and Jobs Compact. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Xiangtan University (China), Martin Luther University of Halle Wittenberg (Germany) and Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley. He has published a book titled International Watercourses Law in the Nile Basin, Three States at a Crossroads (Routledge, Oxfordshire 2013) and co-authored edited books including Ethiopian-African Perspectives on Human Rights and Good Governance ( NWV Pub., Graz, Austria 2014). He is deeply involved in the drafting of national investment, industrial park, CRRF and refugee related laws and policies in Ethiopia, and has extensively published articles, book chapters and policy briefs on refugee law, human rights, labor rights and legal aspects of Ethiopian foreign policy.

Tadesse’s research focuses on the fast-evolving refugee law and policy setting in Ethiopia. It addresses lingering issues relating to legal frameworks, institutional response mechanisms, challenges and opportunities in the implementation of the new refugee policy and the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework in Ethiopia. Specifically, the research analyzes what the new normative and institutional responses on refugees imply in terms of the rights of refugees recognized under international instruments and whether such approaches represent sustainable solutions.

Andrew Woodhouse is a lecturer in law at the University of Liverpool and co-director of the EU Law @ Liverpool research unit. Andrew received his PhD in EU law from the University of Liverpool with no corrections. He has engaged with a number of European universities, co-organizing a transnational PhD colloquium with the Universities of Leiden and Oslo and spending time as a visiting researcher at the University of Antwerp. He has taught and lectured on courses in EU law, UK constitutional law and comparative constitutional law. As part of the EU Law @ Liverpool research unit, Andrew has helped to shape the debate on the UK ’s withdrawal from the European Union. This has included engaging with governmental actors, as well as contributing to the public debate through national ( LBC ) and international media ( Yahoo ). 

Andrew’s research interests lie in the area of constitutional law and theory. His PhD research focused on the role of national parliaments in the European Union assessing the limits of national representative democracy in a multi-level governance framework. His work on the potential for judicial review of national parliamentary action in the EU legislative process was published in the  Common Market Law Review . Andrew will continue to explore the role of national parliaments in the European Union as a Michigan Grotius Scholar, reflecting on the extent to which they are being instrumentalized in the EU . In particular, he will ask whether the symbolism of national parliaments is being used by a range of national and European actors in pursuit of political ends.

Junseok Yoon has been a judge of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Korea for seven years. He has obtained a Master of Laws degree from and has completed Ph.D. coursework in tax law at Seoul National University School of Law. He is also a member of the International Association of Tax Judges and the International Fiscal Association. He has published articles and given presentations on tax issues, such as “Tax Statutory Interpretation in Law and Economic View“, “A Study on Notification on Changes in Amount of Income”, “Requirements of Acquisition Tax Exemption on Real Estate for Religious Organizations”, “Commercial and Tax Accounting in Korea” and “Withholding Tax on Domestic Source Income”. Since he has been interested in and conducted research on other legal issues as well as tax issues, he participated in the WIPO IGC 35th Session and UNCITRAL Working Group 3 ( ISDS Reforms) 37th session as a member of a Korean Delegation.  He is also a member of the Task-Force Team for Judicial Support for the Disabled.    

Junseok’s main research topic is “Prevention of Treaty Abuse and Limitation on Benefits of U.S. Model Income Convention”. He argues that in light of the substantial interaction between Korea and the United States, they might agree to revise the current income tax treaty and align their agreement with contemporary international tax policy on the prevention of treaty abuse. Because there have been few studies on the Korean Supreme Court’s Decision on LOB provision or comprehensive LOB in Korea, his research on the LOB provision will serve as valuable guidance for both judges and researchers.  

Also of Interest

Jump to navigation

• EU Documents
• Investment Treaties
• Recent Literature
• Newsletters

Moscow Convention for the Protection of Investors’ Rights

• Copyright 2015 italaw
• Top of Page

Student Profile: Vladimir Bejdo, DPSS’23

Born in Athens, Greece, Vladimir Bejdo graduated from the University of Washington in 2022 at age 18 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a minor in law, societies, and justice. “I attended the University of Washington through its Transition School/Early Entrance Program, and that gave me the ability to matriculate at the University of Washington in lieu of attending high school.”   While completing his undergraduate degree, Bejdo wrote a thesis on a line of European case-law specifying limits to the freedom of assembly and association necessary in a democratic society under a comparative law and courts professor. The thesis, driven by a mixture of doctrinal and empirical legal research methods, received a departmental award and was presented at an undergraduate research symposium. Although Bejdo said he deeply appreciated having access to top researchers and diverse opportunities for engagement while at Washington, he felt formal quantitative learning and skills were missing from his experiences. “I had some informal exposure to programming and computational statistics through independent research or projects with professors, but I wanted to take on more rigorous work in quantitative analysis.”   This sentiment carried through in his role as a Program Coordinator for the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. “In an ideal world, the admissions process could be more data-informed,” Bejdo said. “I was seeking ways to discuss and implement methods in marketing analytics, return on investment calculations, and technical translations in the work we were doing in graduate admissions to ensure it had its greatest possible impact.”   With these personal and professional enrichment opportunities in mind, Bejdo enrolled in the Data and Policy Summer Scholar (DPSS) program at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. “I wanted a self-contained credential program to explore graduate level coursework at an institution that would stretch my thinking about how social research is done. This, combined with the application to law, policy, and my current work, allowed me to explore my intellectual curiosities.”   His DPSS experience, Bejdo said, satiated that curiosity. “The DPSS coursework was engaging and provided me with a sense of fulfillment. Plus, I appreciated the asynchronous nature of the course and range of TA office hours, especially as I was on the west coast.”   In addition to the online programming offered through the course, many students, including Bejdo, had the opportunity to visit campus in September 2023. “This meet-up event allowed me to network with Harris faculty and administrators, which made the ties to UChicago feel more real. Additionally, meeting my classmates and program alumni and learning about their diverse experiences gave me insight on different policy areas and allowed for the sharing of perspectives and advice.”   As for what’s next for Bejdo, he will be attending law school at the University of California, Berkeley—taking with him the skills he developed through DPSS. “I see a personal and social value in practicing law, because it will allow me to unite my commitments into a vocation that promises to be fruitful to society. And, because of my DPSS experience, I will always be data literate, which is important—even in work that is not inherently technical. A verifiable, empirical understanding of the world as shaped by the law can spur intelligent discussions of the policy issues that both undergird and follow from legal reasoning. After all, results should always be quantified and analyzed to help ensure the value of their outcomes.”

• Manage display

Upcoming Events

Harris campus visit.

Keller Center 1307 E 60th St Chicago , IL 60637 United States

Get to Know Harris! Public Sector Scholarship

Get to know harris macrm and phd information session, you might also be interested in....

Natasha Mathur, MSCAPP’19, on the Connection Between the Real World and Data

Alumni Profile: Grisel Hernandez, DPSS’23

Alumni Profile: Alexandria Porter, PAC'23

Student Profile: Carrie Collins, MPP Class of 2024

• How to Apply
• Why Public Policy
• Financial Aid
• Academic Advising
• Disability Resources
• Room Reservations
• Academic Calendar
• Faculty Resources
• Faculty Access
• Human Resources
• News and Events
• Alumni Directory
• Get Involved

There’s Money in Bull Riding, and Big Law Is Getting Its Share

By Roy Strom

Women’s soccer. Pickleball. Indoor golf. Even bull riding is a target for private equity money flowing into the sports business.

Deals now span far beyond investing in the four major US professional leagues. That’s boosting Big Law’s M&A practices, including at law firms long known for representing the billionaire buyers and sellers of the country’s largest sports teams.

Just about any business that generates revenue from athletes chasing balls—or mounting 1,500-lb bucking bovines—is getting the attention of investors. That includes emerging sports leagues, media companies, or maintaining the green grass at the 80,000-seat AT&T Stadium in Dallas known as “Jerry World.”

With only so many NBA and MLB teams to invest in, private equity firms are building out portfolios of investments in lesser-known—albeit riskier—sports that may pay out handsomely for a more modest investment.

“It’s a different set of players, and different types of transactions than what we’re used to historically in the sports space,” said Adam Sullins, who co-chairs Latham & Watkins’ entertainment, sports and media practice.

The sports-tech industry saw record M&A activity in 2023, with 328 deals valued at nearly $27 billion, according to investment bank Drake Star. That was up from 236 deals in 2022 worth nearly $10 billion. That data tracks companies in media and broadcasting, fan engagement technologies, fantasy sports, gambling, and data analytics, among others.

Investment firms such as Arctos Capital and RedBird Capital have raised billions in funds dedicated to the sports industry. Sixth Street, which has $75 billion in assets under management and is a minority owner of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, is looking to raise its first sports-focused fund, Bloomberg reported in May.

Private equity firms have invested in the major sports leagues since Major League Baseball first allowed institutional capital to back teams in 2019. The National Basketball Association and National Hockey League have followed suit. The National Football League doesn’t allow institutional investors, but it is currently debating the issue.

More recently, asset managers have branched out from the major sports leagues.

Big Law’s Work

Latham & Watkins announced two nontraditional sports deals since mid-June.

The firm represented private equity giant Carlyle in its investment in the National Women’s Soccer League club Seattle Reign FC. And it advised EverPass Media, which counts sports-focused investment firm RedBird Capital as a financial backer, in its acquisition of UPshow, which sells businesses the rights to stream NFL Sunday Ticket.

“A sports practice isn’t just about representing the teams and the leagues anymore,” said Frank Saviano, a Latham partner enmeshed in the sports industry. “Our client base includes the top private equity funds and private debt funds that in one way or another have hired our sports team.”

Hogan Lovells has also racked up recent deals in the space.

This month, the firm advised global sports investment firm Dynasty Equity, which co-led a Series A investment in TMRW Sports, a virtual golf circuit whose founders include Tiger Woods and Rory McIlory.

In March, it announced its work on behalf of Major League Pickleball in a merger with erstwhile rival Professional Pickleball Association. The combined tours secured a $75 million investment from private equity firm SC Holdings. Law firms Choate Hall & Stewart and King & Spalding also advised on that deal.

From Bull Riding to Green Grass

Perhaps the largest deal typifying the race among private investors to control sports revenue came in April, when private equity firm Silver Lake acquired sports and entertainment company Endeavor Group Holdings for $13 billion.

Endeavor owns UFC, WWE, the Pro Bull Riding circuit, and Euroleague Basketball. It also controls talent and marketing agencies, a sports betting data business, and sports streaming technologies.

At least nine major law firms worked on the deal, including Latham, Kirkland & Ellis, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Sullivan & Cromwell, Freshfields, Debevoise, Skadden, and Akin.

“You are also starting to see much more activity by investors outside of the ‘big four’ national leagues,” said Michael Considine, a Dallas-based Kirkland partner who has advised investors in Premier League Lacrosse, the National Women’s Soccer League, Formula One and others. “People are taking a look at sports and sports-related investments very seriously.”

Beyond the leagues, teams, and media deals, some investors see value in the actual green fields.

Sports-focused investment firm Bruin Capital in May acquired PlayGreen, a Dutch company that maintains natural grass fields and counts as clients the Dallas Cowboys, Boston Red Sox, Wimbledon, and Premier League soccer clubs Arsenal and Tottenham. Simpson Thacher advised Bruin Capital on the deal.

No ‘Golden Ticket’ Hunt

Private equity investors see emerging sports as part of a broader trend that the industry will continue to deliver significant returns, said Russell Hedman, a Hogan Lovells partner who co-led the firm’s work for Dynasty on the TMRW Sports investment.

“It takes vision to see the next opportunities, not just the sports that are already succeeding,” Hedman said. “They’re not trying to get the Willy Wonka golden ticket. Good investors are trying to get results by building portfolios based upon a solid thesis.”

Lesser-known sports in the US that could garner private equity attention include rugby, cricket, cycling, sailing, motorsports, drone racing and lacrosse, said Michael Kuh, Hogan Lovells’ New York office managing partner who frequently handles sports deals.

Part of the push into new sports is driven by the expansion of digital media companies seeking live programming, he said. A thirst for programming on Facebook or Youtube, for example, could open a path to more lucrative media rights deals for new sports.

“It creates all kinds of new opportunities for sports that were not traditionally marquee sports in the US,” Kuh said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Roy Strom in Chicago at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Opfer at [email protected] ; Alessandra Rafferty at [email protected]

Learn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:

Learn about bloomberg law.

AI-powered legal analytics, workflow tools and premium legal & business news.

Already a subscriber?

Log in to keep reading or access research tools.

KPMG Personalization

• Global ESG due diligence+ study 2024

Moving from risk to value creation

• Home ›
• Insights ›

ESG due diligence rising in priority

ESG due diligence remains a priority for dealmakers. In fact, respondents to the latest Global KPMG due diligence study report a rise in ESG priority in transactions over the last 12 to 18 months, despite challenges.

Many global M&A markets have decelerated in the face of higher interest rates. Geopolitical and economic uncertainty has taken its toll, shifting priorities for many businesses. And, in some countries, there is lively public debate about the merits and justifications to include ESG factors in investment decisions.

Despite these headwinds, the findings from our latest survey of more than 600 active dealmakers from 35 geographies confirms the results of the first-ever international study on ESG due diligence. In 2022, we set out to explore ESG sentiments among dealmakers across the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMA) region. A follow-up study in the US in 2023 found similar developments, albeit slight less pronounced than in the EMEA region. 

ESG in deal is rapidly maturing. The ESG lens is becoming increasingly important to investors and customers. The difficulty lies in the breadth of the topic, making it critical to know how to look at it in a focused manner. That’s why we focus on value not values. Craig Mennie Global Head of Transaction Services KPMG Australia

Global insights at a glance.

ESG due diligence continues to rise in importance, despite headwinds. Dealmakers report an increased importance of ESG due diligence over the past 12 to 18 months, and expect further increases soon. This counters initial expectations of a decline in the importance of ESG factors due to softer M&A activity, economic uncertainty and an ESG backlash in some countries.

Leading investors tie ESG to the investment thesis and drive financial value from it. They do this by combining a deep understanding of the commercial, operational, and financial risks and opportunities triggered by evolving ESG regulations and stakeholder expectations with a disciplined focus on financial returns during the holding period. They use tools like comprehensive baselining, integrated 100- day action plans, and a systemic scan for sources of financing to improve their investee’s performance. Such performance improvements can materialize in the form of increasing revenues, decreasing costs, or de-risking of an investment, across various environmental and social and governance areas — at this moment, typically in connection with themes such as decarbonization, recycling and circularity and supply chain management.

Challenges in conducting ESG due diligence persist, but solutions are emerging. Investors struggle with selecting a meaningful, yet actionable scope with receiving quality data from target companies, and with quantifying potential findings. However, for each of these challenges, there are emerging solutions. On scoping, it is becoming increasingly clear which topics should indeed be part of an ESG due diligence workstream, with the focus moving from values to value. On data quality, we see a great opportunity for sellers and sell-side advisors to drive value from divestments by commissioning higher-quality ESG vendor documentation. And on quantification, the synergies between ESG due diligence teams and commercial and operational due diligence teams are becoming clearer.

Key findings

It is becoming increasingly clear that considering ESG on transactions primarily means understanding the commercial implications that could have a significant deal value impact. Florian Bornhauser Director, Deal Advisory, Co-Head of Strategy Group in Switzerland KPMG Switzerland

Global ESG due diligence study 2024

Learn how leading investors are leveraging evolving ESG regulations and shifting stakeholder behaviors with a disciplined focus on financial returns.

Considering ESG in investment decisions has become non-negotiable for many investors. The extent and depth to which ESG-related risks and opportunities are being considered has increased significantly over the past 12 months, and leading investors are driving value from it. Julie Vasadi Partner, Head of ESG Transaction Services, Deal Advisory KPMG Australia

Interactive dashboard of 2024 findings

Interactive dashboard

Discover the data that drives the world of ESG due diligence with our interactive dashboard. Designed to offer a more personalized view of the data points detailed in our report, this tool allows you to delve deeper into the survey results. With the ability to filter data by region, company type, and sectors, you can gain additional perspectives and insights that go beyond the report.

This dashboard is a companion to the Global ESG due diligence study and when used together, they provide a comprehensive understanding of the findings.  Download the report and explore the dashboard today. Unlock the power of data to drive your ESG due diligence decision-making process.

ESG due diligence around the globe

 Click on the country or region below for the unique point of view in each market. 

ESG due diligence in Australia

In australia, decarbonization, climate risk – both physical and transition – dominate the esg conversation. with no required esg regulations in place just yet, companies keenly aware of the financial implications of esg are voluntarily reporting on their esg practices and disclosing standards. investors, too, are increasingly aware of the importance of identifying climate risks and mitigating climate exposures. modern slavery, human rights and labor practices are also growing focus areas as dealmakers look to better assess potential reputational risks associated with non-compliance. yet, it is the opportunities for value creation that has captured the imagination of mature dealmakers. reinforced by intensifying progressive sentiments, dealmakers are assessing potential targets with a lens on how well they can navigate the transition to a low-carbon economy. those with such potential, can innovate using australia’s natural advantages, its abundant sunshine, for example, to enhance competitiveness in the renewable energy sector, and access new revenue streams and markets. products with strong esg credentials can also command premium prices. seeking value, not values the appetite for esg due diligence is rising, yet the breadth and complexity of the topics within the esg umbrella is challenging. unlike financial due diligence, which has a well-defined scope, esg due diligence encompasses a wide range of issues that can make it difficult for investors to know which issues to prioritize and manage. adding to this is the lack of prescriptive regulations, like those in the eu, that are making it tough for businesses to navigate socially sensitive situations. dealmakers also struggle with the practical aspects of integrating esg considerations into their dealmaking. this includes defining and measuring the financial impact of esg performance. as finding the right advisors who can offer a holistic approach that encompasses environmental, social and governance factors with sector knowledge and an investor acumen. kpmg professionals help clients focus on value, not values. driven by the financial value that esg due diligence can bring to an investment, teams bring their extensive experience and global methodologies to quickly and efficiently define a scope of work that targets value creation, which is translated into financial language. as the country prepares to implement new esg-related reporting frameworks, starting with climate disclosures in 2025, esg due diligence awareness and adoption is expected to grow across all market segments. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in australia www.kpmg.au, esg due diligence in canada, canada continues to strengthen its understanding and implementation of corporate esg risk mitigation . in the early days of the responsible investing movement, the country’s larger public pension funds were among the first to recognize the impact esg could have on enhancing revenue, reducing costs and mitigating risks. many of canada’s banks , corporations and investors quickly followed suit, voluntarily aligning with international sustainability standards like the principles for responsible investment (pri) and the task force on climate-related financial disclosures (tcfd). as mandatory measures begin to emerge, including reporting on climate risk management for banks, the fight against forced and child labor in supply chains across all sectors, and federal and provincial carbon pricing mechanisms, the country will see even more transparency across esg considerations. this proactive approach is leading many investors and businesses to view esg due diligence as an effective tool for identifying opportunities for value creation rather than solely as a way to mitigate risks. opportunities abound in esg the energy transition, for example, offers ample investment opportunities in renewable energy, electric vehicles and battery storage. government incentives at various levels further support these initiatives, offering financial benefits for energy efficiency and retraining programs. on the risk side, the country’s exposure to wildfires and extreme heat events call for robust climate risk management strategies, especially for the transportation and logistics , mining and industrial manufacturing sectors. despite this support for esg due diligence, investors are challenged by the limited access to reliable data, especially when targets may not provide comprehensive information. canada’s diverse investment portfolio spans various global markets, making it difficult to maintain consistent and comparable esg information. in particular, smaller investors struggle with limited resources and expertise compared to larger funds. to help navigate these challenges, kpmg in canada uses its subject matter expertise in various sectors and sustainability issues to provide clients with insights and practical tools. the firm’s global reach and access to a diverse client base support clients with leading trends and practices to help dealmakers connect esg findings to revenue growth, cost management and asset valuation. looking ahead, climate change is expected to demand increased attention in terms of physical and transition risks. the social aspects of esg, including talent attraction and retention, is also gaining prominence. sustainability will increasingly influence valuations – all of which will likely make esg due diligence an essential part of investment decision-making. as esg in canada evolves from a voluntary, business-led initiative to a more structured practice, investors will need to stay agile and seek the professional guidance they’ll need to help turn esg challenges into opportunities for sustainable growth and long-term value creation. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in canada www.kpmg.ca, esg due diligence in china, over the past two decades, esg due diligence has undergone a significant evolution in china. initially, esg disclosures were influenced by foreign investors – global private equity funds investing in china as well as chinese investors participating in outbound opportunities. today, voluntary esg reporting is growing across the country. china’s ambitious carbon targets has supported this uptake. esg standards have been embedded into broader compliance frameworks, such as energy efficiency review, air emissions, water discharge and industrial zoning. these regulations promote sustainable development and meet global standards. for the most part they heavily emphasize environmental concerns, and as such, predominately affect high-risk sectors, such as manufacturing and energy. with the potential to incur operational risks, loss of investor confidence as well as financial penalties, investors have come to see esg due diligence as a compliance exercise. broadening the scope of esg due diligence as more and more investors and companies recognize the value of esg, this perception is starting to change. investors and consumers are calling for private equity businesses to prioritize environmental and social responsibilities. government regulations are following suit. guidelines are being developed to promote corporate social responsibilities, and environmental regulations are expanding to more industries. geopolitical uncertainties are becoming more complex, requiring investors to carefully consider these factors in their investment decisions. there are also opportunities for local and global investors: aligning to best practices boosts a company’s public image at home and enhances its appeal globally. the latter point is of particular interest for those investing in emerging sectors, including renewable energy and electric vehicles. all together, these factors are helping corporate and private equity investors broaden their scope of esg. as more and more investors perform esg due diligence and use its findings as a strategic tool to create value, they will likely call on businesses to collect reliable esg data to better assess esg performance – such data is currently lacking. investors should also look to their advisors for such strategic insights, in addition to providing in-depth analysis of regulatory compliance. in time, it is anticipated this experience will help investors in china embrace esg as a core aspect of their business strategy. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in china www.kpmg.cn, esg due diligence in finland, the trend in finland is clear: corporate and private equity investors recognize esg as a value driver to enhance portfolio performance. esg due diligence is gaining traction, too, appearing in about 20 percent of all deals. this movement is greatly influenced by the esg regulation landscape in the eu. like other eu countries, finland adheres to the corporate sustainability reporting directive and directives in place in the eu. this proactive approach goes further. mature investors, particularly private equity houses, have integrated esg considerations deeply into their strategies and operations. portfolio managers, for example, have developed internal capabilities and tools to scout targets that are innovating sustainable solutions, such as smart grid technology, or using circular economy practices to minimize waste and maximize resources. from an early stage of the deal, they assess esg factors to guide investment decisions and help ensure that potential acquisitions align to their sustainability goals. additionally, they leverage esg performance to attract capital, structuring financial arrangements where esg key performance indicators, such as diversity and climate targets, can influence capital costs. finland’s institutional investors, including pension funds and insurance companies, are highly sophisticated with comprehensive responsible investment policies. using esg strategies, including exclusionary screening, thematic investing, active engagement and esg integration, they can better position their investments to generate financial returns while positively contributing to social and environmental outcomes. investors with less sophisticated practices also increasingly recognize the potential for value creation from strong esg performance. yet, there are challenges holding them back from capturing these opportunities through esg due diligence. with a focus on the immediate risks, some investors struggle to recognize long-term value. further, quantifying value of esg factors, such as human rights and diversity in management, requires sector-specific insights and nuanced analysis that goes beyond simple compliance checks. adding to this challenge are budget constraints. this common issue often leave investors depending on other due diligence workstreams to surface esg risks, or limiting the depth of analysis within a specific esg due diligence. as regulations continue to evolve and investor expectations rise, companies should deepen their esg integration. time will also help investors mature around esg assessments. as they do, pooling sector and esg due diligence expertise can position them to become a benchmark for others to follow. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in finland www.kpmg.fi, esg due diligence in france, investors in france consider esg issues like talent retention, social governance and environmental initiatives as integral to a company’s long-term success. this has led to marked shift in the demand and scope for esg due diligence in the past 10 years. for decades, businesses and investors in france were focused on environmental, health and safety factors related to tangible assets like manufacturing facilities. then with the growing number of french signatories to the un principles of responsible investment since 2012, the scope was expanded to include the fuller esg criteria. this sentiment led to growing demand for esg due diligence. a trend that is helping investors mitigate the environmental, social and governance risks that face many french companies. for example, environmental risks in industries with high environmental footprints or high turnover rates and employee dissatisfaction that can impact business continuity and reputation. on the other hand, esg due diligence is helping mature investors uncover numerous advantages. companies that aligned with decarbonization targets or demonstrate strong ethical supply chain practices often have enhanced reputation capital, which can translate into higher customer loyalty, better employee retention and greater overall market value. sellers, too, win, attracting more investments in their business. despite this growing awareness and appreciation, esg due diligence continues to be seen as a ‘nice to have’ exercise by less mature investors who are unsure which components to assess across the broad scope of esg criteria. these dealmakers often allocate lower budgets to esg due diligence compared to other due diligence streams, making it hard for advisors to provide an effective assessment of the risks and value potential of a deal. in time, as regulatory frameworks evolve and investors become more attuned to the potential business benefits of esg, the demand for esg due diligence will continue to gain momentum. expectations will likely also shift toward more comprehensive and higher-value esg assessments that can open the door to better business outcomes and a more sustainable future. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in france www.kpmg.fr, esg due diligence in germany, the following is the transcript from an interview with elsa stetinger, kpmg in germany, about the evolution of esg due diligence in germany. at a high level, could you please explain the local regulatory framework that supports esg due diligence in recent years, various regulations have been enacted, such as the eu green deal, eu taxonomy, sfdr, tcfd, tnfd, csrd, csddd, german supply chain act, cbam and the anti-greenwashing directive that was recently in 2024 enforced. these have become much more important, especially in the european union. those regulations are also strongly interlinked and relevant nowadays to conduct and support an esg due diligence because those regulations request (i) transparency (ii) comparability and (iii) reporting. this, along with the identification of risks and opportunities, is the core of an esg due diligence. these regulations are a strong signal from politicians and the countries for the need for sustainable investments and transformation that drive the future market outlook and future transactions including esg due diligences on the buy-side and on the sell-side. what are the key esg risks and opportunities that companies in germany face the key esg risks in germany include: understanding the various regulatory requirements and complying to them. generating and providing qualitative and quantitative data – so data availability and quality. understanding the various scope items or esg topics, and implementing those into an applicable, usable and feasible framework to analyze risks and opportunities. setting concrete goals, and sustainably and sequentially achieve those goals. having the sufficient resources – financially or personally – so qualified employees. at the same time, the various regulations are a great steep template and offer a huge chance for: innovation; return-on investment; talent attraction; new market expansion and growth opportunities; reputational, transitional, and transformational chances; and future-proof the business and contribute to a sustainable future, including environmental protection and social fairness. could you provide some examples of how esg factors have influenced investment decisions and/or deal outcomes there are several environmental topics, such as very high emissions, main energy sources from nuclear power plants or brown coal, and severe soil and groundwater contamination that could impact the outcome of a deal. social topics, such as human rights issues, forced or child labor as well as poor working conditions, including severe accidents and deaths within a company are an absolute deal breaker. and of course, there are various other esg factors, such as water scarcity or poor climate mitigation, and climate adaptation measures that can influence the investment decision and the deal price. what are the common challenges that companies face when implementing esg due diligence in your local market some common challenges include: defining a reasonable and manageable esg scope. generating and providing robust data. identifying relevant risks and opportunities by qualified people within the various environmental, social and governance topics. setting priorities of measure implementation and being able to quantify findings within an esg due diligence analysis. how does your firm help clients navigate esg risks and opportunities at kpmg in germany, we have established a robust and at the same time flexible, esg due diligence framework that assess the esg-performance and status quo of a company or investment. our esg due diligence framework is based on the various regulations (as mentioned before) and combines and integrates the anchored environmental, social and governance requirements. additionally, we include other kpis that are appliable to the industry, sector and business activity. our established robust and flexible esg due diligence framework allows us to reveal the material risks and opportunities based on key element and color-coding system. it creates objectivity, transparency, comparability and implies the relevant building blocks as a great basis for future transformation processes and impacts of a company or investment. what trends or developments do you foresee in next 5-10 years i think esg due diligence (as a stand-alone workstream) will a be involved almost in 100% of all deals. the need is and will become very high for transparency and a real sustainable future – away from greenwashing. i think the esg due diligence scope is constantly expanding, and more building blocks will be integrated in the esg due diligence scope as newer and stricter regulations will become enforced. the expansion will include integrity due diligences, a stronger double and even triple materiality assessments, and of course risks and opportunities. there will be more precise benchmarking with better data quality, and customer and stakeholder analysis. i believe that various companies might not be able to exist on the market in the next five to 10 years if they do not undertake a sustainable transformation. at the same time, i believe that esg high-performing, very innovative and sustainable companies with a smart governance structure with high-qualitative and robust data will conquer the market in the next five to 10 years. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in germany www.kpmg.de, esg due diligence in iceland, a growing number of investors in iceland are aligning their investments to sustainability objectives. the upward trend comes from the country’s rising commitment to environmental sustainability, global climate action initiatives, and gender equality and other social issues. as a result, esg due diligence is evolving in the country. five years ago, esg considerations were rarely part of a deal’s due diligence process. now, there is a promising evolution in a short period of time where investors are asking esg-related questions during traditional due diligence exercises, such as tax and legal. more mature investors are also leveraging esg due diligence to assess the value creation potentials in a target. in a country ripe for sustainable innovation, investors are looking for businesses that have the potential to advance renewable energy options like geothermal or hydroelectric power. iceland is also well-known for its strong stance on gender equality and other social equities. this social consciousness is having a greater influence on investors as they seek out targets that actively promote equal opportunities and representation across all levels. compliance as a first step with financial bodies calling for updated reporting from companies big and small, the race to implement the new regulations has left many companies scrambling. partly this is due to a cultural tendency to comply with regulations only when enforced. however, good progress has been made. larger companies with their better access to systems and expertise have been more efficiently responding to mandates. smaller businesses, which make up the majority of iceland’s economy, have also been working to understand the technical standards and minimum safeguards required to comply, despite their limited access to expert resources. as icelandic companies adapt to these changes, the role of due diligence will become increasingly intertwined with esg factors. a thorough understanding of esg issues will be essential for due diligence teams to assess the fuller spectrum of compliance and sustainability aspects. companies will also need to continue to develop their esg practices to mitigate associated risks and fully capitalize on the sustainability opportunities ahead. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in iceland www.kpmg.is, esg due diligence in island group, in jurisdictions known for their susceptibility to significant climate risks, esg due diligence is gaining attention. the many islands within the caribbean, together with jersey, guernsey, the isle of man and malta make up the kpmg islands group, where investors and businesses are beginning to recognize the potential of esg to attract global capital and ensure sustainable growth. in the cayman islands and bermuda, the financial services sector shows a growing awareness of esg considerations. in the more traditional industrial and tourism-centric jurisdictions, such as trinidad & tobago and jamaica, there is also a growing understanding for esg and its importance to long-term sustainability and competitiveness. with the potential for substantial financial returns, more mature regional players and impact investors are beginning to integrate esg factors into their investment strategies. progress, however, is slow due to the absence of mandatory regulations as well as global political influence. for now, esg integration relies heavily on voluntary adoption and the foresight of investors and business leaders who are looking to open up new opportunities for growth and development. as governments in the region begin to implement frameworks to support sustainable finance, businesses will likely begin to embed esg principles into their core operations and investors are more likely to incorporate esg due diligence into their decision-making, along with the more traditional financial, commercial, regulatory and tax due diligence. this shift could come faster as governments contend with the realities of climate exposure. hurricanes, rising sea levels and extreme weather events pose significant threats to these islands. the bahamas, for example, is still recovering from hurricane dorian in 2019 and may be at risk of financial default if another hurricane strikes. an eye focused on innovation on the upside, with plenty of sunshine and wind energy (as well as the increasingly talked-about natural resource, sea grass), the caribbean region is teaming with untapped esg potential into renewable energy sources like solar and wind power and the ability to create a carbon credit economy from sea grass, as is being explored in the bahamas. such innovations can be hindered by high costs and legacy agreements, but declining costs of renewable technologies and innovative financial strategies, such as thematic bonds, could unlock substantial growth in this sector. governments and private investors can also come together on large-scale renewable energy projects that could help reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels, but also create sustainable jobs and stimulate economic growth. the kpmg islands group professionals are helping investors understand the long-term value that comes from sustainable practices and unlock the region’s potential for sustainable growth. as more investors take advantage of these opportunities, kpmg professional will help them integrate esg due diligence to identify potential risks and uncover opportunities for value generation. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in island group https://kpmg.com/ky, esg due diligence in norway, esg is moving up the business agenda in norway . already many businesses and investors comply with esg reporting. this signals the country’s cultural commitment to sustainability and the environment. businesses also feel a sense of national pride and responsibility to uphold norway’s image as a responsible and ethical nation. even more businesses are expected to adhere to reporting in line with eu and national standards and requirements as they begin to roll out, including the corporate sustainability reporting directive (csrd) and the corporate sustainability due diligence directive (cs3d). at the core of norway’s new regulations is the transparency act, requiring companies to identify and assess actual and potential adverse impacts on human rights and decent working conditions in companies and their supply chains, among other requirements. as welcome as these regulations may be, they are creating new challenges for companies. businesses often struggle with understanding the depth of compliance required by new and evolving regulations. lack of reliable data and information adds another layer of difficulty. for example, norway’s energy businesses often have complex, multi-tiered supply chains that deal with suppliers from countries and regions with lower transparency practices and potential human rights violations. without a clear line of sight, companies can be exposed to reputational risks and public disapproval. such risks can extend to investors, putting greater importance on comprehensive esg due diligence developed by esg specialists that stay on top of evolving regulations and understand the geopolitical risk environment within specific sectors. sustainable opportunities encourage evolution as important as it is to mitigate risks associated with these social factors, investors and businesses are looking across the broader scope of esg to identify potential opportunities to create value for their companies. this is most notable in the country’s growing clean tech and renewable energy sectors with decarbonization innovations like electrolyzers for hydrogen production and expanding hydropower and wind energy sources. as these and other technologies evolve, there may be growing focus on the intersection of tech investments and esg considerations. for example, as more businesses leverage ai they may want to consider how to best power their respective data centers with sustainability in mind. such evolutions will also shift and refine the scope of esg due diligence to help investors maintain their sustainable and ethical commitments, while enhancing their portfolio performance. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in norway www.kpmg.no, esg due diligence in spain, in spain, investors have come to see esg due diligence as an essential part of value creation in transactions. this shift indicates a growing sophistication among corporate and private equity dealmakers, and a recognition of the strategic potential benefits of robust esg credentials. spain’s esg due diligence practices are heavily influenced by the influx of eu regulations over the last several years. these directives compel funds to integrate esg considerations into their operations. this exposes businesses and investors to risks should they neglect to comply to these mandates. for example, in sectors like energy or agriculture, lack of alignment could lead to unforeseen liabilities and reputational damage. regulations aside, evolving consumer demands influenced corporate and private equity investors to practice greater corporate responsibility and transparency also contributed to the shift. as investors began integrating esg factors into their investment decisions, the experience provided proof that prioritizing esg supported long-term financial performance. it also enhanced their reputation and helped build trust with clients, consumers and other stakeholders. esg-focused companies are often less volatile, and demonstrate superior risk management and operational efficiency. they are also more innovative. such innovation could come in terms of how well a target can adapt to future regulatory changes or evolving market conditions. it also offers insights in a company’s potential to branch out to emerging sectors, such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture or green technology – all of which are poised for substantial growth in spain. for the most part, esg in spain has mainly centered on environmental aspects. addressing issues like climate change and decarbonization impacts a company’s operations, portfolio of products and services, as well as its overall strategic approach. the social and governance aspects of esg are less tangible. yet, mature investors are increasingly recognizing such issues, like human rights and fair labor conditions, can be integral to building resilient companies. quantifying such factors is one of the challenges dealmakers face during the due diligence process. unlike environmental liabilities that can often be translated into financial terms, social and governance issues can be tough to attach to a concreate number. such complex valuations call for esg specialists who can assess the cost of reputational risks on company value. looking ahead, esg due diligence in spain is expected to continue to evolve from a niche practice and become a mainstream necessity. this will be especially important as regulations progress and adjust, and consumer demands shift to new focus areas. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in spain www.kpmg.es, esg due diligence in u.k., investors in the uk are increasingly focusing on sustainability and esg considerations in their investment process. as a result, esg due diligence has jumped higher up the m&a agenda. the kpmg 2024 global esg due diligence study found 71 percent of respondents reported an increase in importance of esg in transactions over the last 12 to 18 months. there are several drivers underpinning this shift. esg has become an important lever to create value in transactions and dealmakers are seeing higher returns for their investments when there are stronger esg practices and positioning in place. investors are also focused on protecting value. with increased regulations, such as the eu corporate sustainability reporting directive (csrd), and concern for ethical considerations there are potential reputational risks that could come with non-compliance. there has also been a significant increase in impact investing. investors focused on impact seek companies that balance profit with purpose, and are focused on addressing global sustainability challenges, such as the energy transition. for investors, then, failure to embrace esg can leave tangible value on the table. it can also minimize the pool of capital, and potentially prevent a deal from closing. uk investors are turning away from some sectors, such as tobacco, gambling and fossil fuels due to ethical consideration and long-term sustainability concerns. according to the survey, more than 50 percent of surveyed investors indicated that esg was a “deal stopper.” investors are also asking more of target companies. with esg due diligence becoming a strategic, cross-function and commercially focused exercise, investors are looking for greater transparency on their climate-related practices, diversity, equity and inclusion programs, supply chains and more. this is pressuring sellers to enhance esg-related efforts, especially as more dealmakers plan to include esg due diligence in deal strategies going forward. globally, 57 percent of survey respondents say they expect to perform esg due diligence on most of their transactions over the next two years. even with this rise in activity, investors are looking for greater clarity around the areas to evaluate, specifically in fast-moving deal contexts. whereas others are looking to advisors to help quantify less tangible esg factors, such as the impact of reputation risks or long-term environmental impacts on value. kpmg in the uk’s esg transaction advisory services is placed to help, bringing you the experience and insights you need to realize value from esg in your investments. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in u.k. www.kpmg.uk, esg due diligence in u.s., esg is undergoing a transformative shift in the us. with regulations tightening, the investor community is beginning to recognize the link between sustainable esg practices and sustainable business growth. esg has long been on the agendas of us investors and businesses. federal and state regulations were initially focused on environmental health and safety matters, ensuring businesses had the right permits for sustainable practices like air emissions, wastewater discharge and waste management. many of these requirements are still in place today. states have also introduced esg-related regulations to encompass a wider range of issues, including sustainability, employee well-being and regulatory compliance. more recently, states like california have implemented climate disclosure requirements for businesses. investor influence spurs esg due diligence yet, the biggest push for esg mandates comes from investors themselves. over the past five to eight years, there has been a marked shift in interest around esg from investors. this has been particularly driven by private equity investors who are focused on creating sustainable and long-term value for their businesses. they are funding innovative projects in renewable energy and carbon capture and energy-efficient technologies. they are also turning to their advisors to discuss governance matters, supply chain transparency, product lifecycle and customer satisfaction. growing demands from socially and environmentally conscious consumers are further pressuring us companies to integrate esg considerations into their business strategy and operations. however, reporting these practices to investors during esg due diligence is proving challenging. one major issue is the collection and management of relevant data, particularly for greenhouse gas inventories. many companies can track their direct emissions, capturing indirect emissions from supply chains is complex and resource intensive. governance is another area of concern. not all companies have access to robust mechanisms to report regulatory reporting and materiality assessments, or reliable data on social matters related to business ethics, labor practices or supply chain integrity. despite these initial challenges, investors and businesses are starting to realize the financial and operational benefits of more sustainable and ethically responsible practices and investments. looking ahead, emerging regulations and increasing stakeholder demands is expected to continue to shape the esg landscape in the us. as this happens, investors will need to stay agile and seek expert guidance to unlock new growth opportunities. visit our website if you want to know more about esg due diligence in u.s. www.kpmg.us.

KPMG member firms are at the nexus of the intersection between M&A and ESG. Through their daily work, KPMG professionals are at the forefront of the developments taking place in this rapidly evolving field. They are working with many of the leading corporate and financial investors to identify and develop ESG-related deal strategies and processes that meet their unique needs and objectives. Select your country or region below to connect with a local ESG practitioner.

Julie Vasadi

Head of ESG Due Diligence, Transaction Services KPMG Australia

Seymur Niftaliyev

Director, Head of KPMG Law KPMG in Azerbaijan

Katharina Schönauer

Senior Manager, Advisory KPMG in Austria

Stijn Potargent

Partner, Deals | Advisory KPMG in Belgium

Arnaud van Dijk

Partner, ESG KPMG in the Cayman Islands

Niclas Buch Mahler

Associate Director, Deal Advisory KPMG in Denmark

Alexey Abramov

Partner, Head of KPMG Law, KPMG in the Caspian

Partner, ESG Advisory / ESG Data & Technology Lead KPMG in China

Partner, Deal advisory KPMG China

Jaba Gvelebiani

Head of KPMG Law KPMG in Georgia

Tomas Otterström

Global Leader, Sustainable Finance Services KPMG in Finland

Nicolas Cottis

Director, Responsible Investment, Transaction Services KPMG in France

Frank Hengelbrock

Partner, Advisory, Head of ESG Due Diligence in Deals KPMG in Germany

Director KPMG in Hungary

Head of Transaction Services, Deal Advisory KPMG in Indonesia

Shivananda Shetty

Partner, Practice Lead- ESG KPMG in India

Shane O'Reilly

Director, KPMG Sustainable Futures KPMG in Ireland

Stefano Giacomelli

Associate Partner KPMG in Italy

Fadi Al Shihabi

ESG Services Leader KPMG Lower Gulf

Kyohei Yoshino

Partner, Deal advisory KPMG in Japan

Sheen, Sue-Ryearn Jessica

Director, Deal advisory, KPMG Korea KPMG in Korea

Elaine Cheah

Partner–Head of Deal Advisory & Transaction Services KPMG in Malaysia

Jeiran Ebrahimi

Director Transaction Services KPMG in the Netherlands

Krzysztof Pietrzyk

Director, Deal Advisory KPMG in Poland

Marc Leubner

Associate Partner KPMG in Slovakia

Ramón Pueyo

Director, Governance, Risk and Compliance KPMG in Spain

Tomas Grendal

Head of Deal Strategy KPMG in Sweden

Florian Bornhauser

Director, Global Strategy Group, Deal Advisory KPMG in Switzerland

Vincent Chang

Deputy Head of Advisory, Head of Private Equity KPMG in Taiwan

Songon Kiatlertpongsa

Partner, Deal Advisory KPMG in Thailand

James Holley

Partner, ESG Transaction Services KPMG in the UK

Jakob Schenker

Director, Sustainability and Climate Advisory KPMG in the US

Clark Savolaine

Partner, Deal Advisory, Global Infrastructure Advisory KPMG in Canada

Review our latest insights

Taking a strategic approach towards corporate governance, board-level responsibility and reporting

Anchoring ESG in governance

How leading M&A teams are managing ESG DD

Leveraging ESG due diligence to unlock value

Examining steps taken by 24 countries as well as key economic sectors to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

Examining the progress of 24 countries as well as key economic sectors

Assessing the risks and opportunities of digital assets and data

Sustainable deal value comes from a deeper, more expansive look at a deal’s risks and value opportunities

Helping dealmakers create sustainable value

How KPMG can help

KPMG’s integrated team of specialists works at deal speed to help you find and drive value throughout your transformation and transaction lifecycle.

An integrated team of specialists working at deal speed to help you find and drive value.

Helping you realize desired results with a deliberate, forward-thinking approach to deal planning, execution and integration.

Helping you realize desired results with a deliberate, forward-thinking approach to...

Unlock the power of ESG to transform your business and build a more sustainable future.

KPMG. Make the Difference.

KPMG firms’ global ESG due diligence methodology

Since the launch of the landmark KPMG ESG due diligence study in the EMEA region in 2022, the state of adoption and prevailing challenges faced by investors have been clear.  In response, KPMG ESG due diligence solution leaders worldwide have developed a market-leading, client-informed ESG due diligence methodology that quantifies ESG risks and value creation opportunities, calibrating them against investment materiality. It combines the experiences of the leading practitioners across the global KPMG organization, making them accessible and consistent to our teams globally.  The KPMG methodology leverages internationally recognized ESG standards and frameworks, as well as industry specific regulations. It is scalable, enabling tailored scoping for respective targets and sectors, and covers a wide array of ESG topics with input from various subject matter specialists across the global KPMG organization. The methodology is also  tech-enabled, drawing on vast public and proprietary ESG benchmarks and data sources globally. Importantly, ESG due diligence findings are calibrated with financial materiality and value drivers, articulated in terms of their strategic business and deal implications.

Russia's weakened energy trade and lost access to the dollar will spark a severe recession within a year, a top economist says

• Russia's economy risks a deep recession within the next year, according to a UC Berkeley economist.
• The nation is seeing its energy revenues wane while losing access to the US dollar.
• That could hit Russia's finances and further isolate Moscow from the global economy.

Vladimir Putin's claims that Russia's economy is doing just fine may soon be hard to back up.

According to UC Berkeley economist Yuriy Gorodnichenko, the nation's economy is in deep trouble and is set to enter a damaging recession within a year.

That's mainly because Russia is losing two things its economy desperately needs, he told Business Insider — a robust energy trade and a steady flow of US dollars.

Moscow's economy is extremely dependent on petrodollars, or dollars obtained through the oil and gas trade, Gorodnichenko said. Yet, with Russia's energy flows upended by sanctions, it's unclear if sales to friendly nations will be enough to prop up the Kremlin's hefty war budget — or if Russia will have enough access to dollars to readily import all the goods and resources its economy needs to function, he said.

That could put Russia's economy on the fast track to a recession in the next 12 months, Gorodnichenko predicted.

"If they have to finance the war and they don't have this resource, it's not clear where they will raise this money," he added. "I predict they're going to face a very serious recession."

Withering energy empire

The energy trade is Russia's biggest money maker. However — thanks, in part, to Western sanctions — Moscow's oil and gas business has suffered over the last year, with sales plunging 24% to a three-year-low in 2023.

That decline is a big financial problem for the Kremlin. Its war against Ukraine is growing more costly, with the government signing a record military budget for 2024. The nation is set to rack up a deficit of 1.59 trillion rubles, or around $18 billion this year, according to the current exchange rate.

"You do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and you very quickly realize that if Russia doesn't have petrodollars, they're going to face a very difficult problem," Gorodnichenko said.

Declining oil sales mean Russia is losing access to the US dollar, as crude transactions are primarily conducted with the greenback.

Related stories

A smaller pool of dollars to transact with could isolate Russia further from the global economy, given the US currency is the backbone of global trade. The dollar accounted for one side in 88% of all foreign transactions in April 2022, far more than any other currency, according to the latest data from the Bank for International Settlements.

Putin has played up Russia's independence from the US and its currency, moving to de-dollarize trade and create alternative payment systems with its allies. But those actions are only pushing the nation closer to economic hardship, Gorodnichenko said, especially considering the fact that Russia still imports "just about everything," from cars to food to furniture and other consumer goods.

A historical view of Russia's finances also shows that GDP is highly correlated to how many petrodollars the economy has access to, Gorodnichenko said. Russia fell into a recession during the global financial crisis and later in 2014, when oil prices plunged and lowered the amount of dollars it was able to bring in.

Gorodnichenko also noted that when the Soviet Union lost access to petrodollars, its economy collapsed within five years. He suggested that Russia's economic decline could occur even quicker, given that the Soviet Union was far more self-sufficient resource-wise than Russia is today.

"If they don't have petrodollars to pay for all the consumer investment goods, they're going to face some difficult problems," Gorodnichkeno said. "Maybe you can get [resources] from China or somebody like that here and there, but globally, it can't really borrow. And so when you have an adverse shock … the effect is going to be amplified."

Economists have been warning about the risk of economic calamity for Russia since 2022, when its invasion of Ukraine prompted a barrage of sanctions that upended trade and finance.

Russia's economy is becoming increasingly fragile the longer the war drags on, experts have said. Even Putin , who has pushed the narrative of Russia's resilient economy, has admitted to key weaknesses in the nation's finances, with the country reeling from sky-high inflation , elevated borrowing costs , and soaring wages .

Watch: Invading Ukraine is making Russia rich

• Main content

More From Forbes

“truly unsustainable”: the effect of medical malpractice on caregiving.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

“Medical malpractice has become a de facto asset class! Facing third-party financing of the plaintiff’s bar, health systems and providers have to realize they are working against a investment thesis that threatens sustainability of these critical services. They must proactively change how they deliver care – for their patients and their bottom-line” says Matthew Sappern, CEO of OB patient safety company PeriGen . In his role, Mr. Sappern has reviewed numerous medical malpractice lawsuits: those in which healthcare providers are sued for allegedly providing medical care that has fallen short of the accepted professional standard .

Medical malpractice cases were meant to protect patients but, now, they can have a negative effect ... [+] on the accessibility, affordability, and quality of care that patients receive.

Annually, nearly 20,000 medical malpractice cases are filed each year in the United States, and, as of 2022, 31.2% of physicians reported that they had been sued at least once in their careers to date. However, getting sued is not necessarily indicative of a surefire medical error on the healthcare provider’s part. In these medical malpractice lawsuits, the prosecution must find causation; it must prove both that the healthcare provider’s actions were below the standard expected of a similarly trained and reasonably competent professional and that said provider’s actions - not any underlying medical issues with the patient - were the cause of any resulting physical or emotional damage.

Regardless of the ultimate verdict, though, these lawsuits highlight some of the flaws in the current medical system - and the subsequent costs to both current and future healthcare patients and providers.

While most medical malpractice cases don't end up in court or with payouts, they still cost ... [+] manpower, money, and time for both the prosecution and the defense.

“99% of the time, it’s the system failing, not the individuals,” says Karen Kolega , DNP, MSN-CNL, RNC-OB, C-EFM, C-ONQS. She has over 25 years of nursing experience herself, is currently working alongside Mr. Sappern as the Chief Nursing Officer at PeriGen, and has served as both a nurse expert reviewer and a character witness in medical malpractice cases. Nursing is one example of a healthcare system that she believes needs to undergo “cultural change”. As of 2024, there were an average of nine registered nurses in the United States for every 1,000 people, the age of nurses – and, thus, their level of experience – is decreasing , and 65 to 80% of nurses work 12 hour shifts, even though longer shifts have been associated with “worse reports of patient care quality and overall safety grade”.

Exactly When Apple Will Launch iPhone 16 And iPhone 16 Pro

Apple warns millions of iphone users—stop using google chrome, amazon prime day 2024: the 136 best deals that are still live.

Likewise, for residents, “working more than 48 weekly work hours was associated with more medical errors, preventable adverse events, as well as near-crashes, occupational exposures, percutaneous injuries, and attentional failures”. In response to this finding, in 2011, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) limited first-year resident-physicians’ work hours to no more than 16 consecutive hours. Reported medical errors and adverse events dropped by more than a third while medical errors resulting in patient death declined by almost two-thirds. The response to this limit on hours was mixed, though, and it was overturned in 2017, once again allowing residents to be scheduled for 24 hours at a time.

hysicians fare slightly better than nurses and residents in terms of working hours, averaging 50 to 59 work hours per week. But, like with nurses, the physician shortage can increase the workload of - and put more pressure on - those currently practicing, potentially increasing their own workload, leading to their own burnout, and/or causing them to reduce their hours or leave medicine completely: outcomes that only exacerbate the current shortage. As is, more than 83 million people in the U.S. live in areas in which access to a primary care physician is scarce.

The physician shortage - like the nurse shortage - is worsening as those practicing burn out, cut ... [+] back their hours. or retire.

Obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) is another medical practice facing a shortage . As the American Association of Medical Colleges reported , the number of women in the United States has increased by 33 million over the recent decades – but first-year OB/GYN residency positions grew by less than 200 in the nearly two-and-a-half decades between 1992 and 2016. Currently, more than a third of all U.S counties don’t have access to reproductive care services and half don’t have a practicing OB/GYN.

OB/GYN is also one of the medical specializations that experiences the most medical malpractice lawsuits; as of 2022, 62.4% of OB/GYNs had been sued at some point during their career. These lawsuits can have some of the highest settlements as well. In the first seven months of 2023, for example, half of the 10 largest medical malpractice verdicts were birth-related, and each payout exceeded $30 million dollars. In contrast, the national average for medical malpractice settlements across medical practices in the U.S. is about $329,565 .

Even before these recent “nuclear” verdicts - cases in which damages exceed $10 million -OB/GYNs were already fearing medical malpractice lawsuits. In 2015, over 50% of OB/GYN respondents said they had significantly changed their practice out of fear of malpractice lawsuits while nurses themselves may be vulnerable to lawsuits simply because they followed the orders of a doctor. As Dr. Kolega shares, nurses - including but not limited to those working in obstetrics and gynecology - are functioning in such a litigious environment, it creates a sense of fear. She adds that nurses, like most people, are “not going to function as well in an environment where [they’re] always worried that they could be sued.”

This environment may cause hospitals to pull back on OB/GYN services too: a move that could protect healthcare workers but could also limit what is available to patients. In 2015, for example, 13.6% of OB/GYN respondents decreased the number of high-risk patients they accepted, 8.4% eliminated vaginal births after the mother had already undergone a Cesarean section in a prior birth, and 6.4% decreased the number of total deliveries performed. Medical professionals also might act conservatively out of an abundance of caution, such as by opting for C-sections over vaginal births, despite the increase in complications , maternal mortality rate , the mother’s recovery time , and the costs for C-sections compared to vaginal births.

Medical professionals in general are working more hours and being taxed more than ever before, while ... [+] those in OB/GYN specifically are also facing a more complex maternal profile than before.

In addition to taxing workers and patients, medical malpractice lawsuits can tax health systems as well. While 80 to 90% of defensible malpractice claims are dismissed with no settlement, the lack of settlement does not mean a lack of work. Dr. Kolega explains that, if a law office requests medical records from a hospital, the hospital must abide by that request. The hospital itself will also review the records to see whether appropriate care was administered. Even if the case goes nowhere - no trial, no settlement - the hospital still must put time and manpower into its own case review, and Dr. Kolega says that hospitals, especially those in states with high rates of litigation frequently get these requests for records and subsequently, for its resources.

If a medical malpractice case does proceed, it will likely cost an average of $30,000 in defense costs. To cover these costs, healthcare systems and professionals may have medical malpractice insurance to cover some of their expenses, such as attorney fees, arbitration and settlement costs, punitive and compensatory damages, and medical damages. To keep those insurance policies active, though, these healthcare workers must pay a premium - and the costs of those premiums have been rising steadily. Between 2011 and 2018, premium rates stayed steady or even decreased, but, between 2020 and 2022, 62% of doctors saw their premiums increase ( 33% said their rates had stayed the same and 5% said their rates had decreased.)

And those in specialties must likely to face a lawsuit – such as anesthesiologists, OB/GYNs, and neurosurgeons – can see rates much higher than the $7,500 average per year to account for that increased risk. For OB/GYNs specifically, a 2019 report found they paid an average of $46,000 per year while a 2024 article noted some could be paying more than $200,000 per year – just for insurance coverage. As a 2022 article summarized , “During the past two to three years, premiums for some specialists, such as OB/GYN, have more than doubled, causing some physicians to question whether they can continue to practice in the state they reside”.

Premiums can change based on a doctor's specialty (such as OB/GYN, neurology, or psychiatry) and ... [+] their location. However, overall, 62% of professionals according to a 2022 survey saw their premiums in case.

In response to these rising premiums and the rising risk of medical malpractice lawsuits, healthcare professionals could move, as the 2022 article notes, and potentially create additional care deserts. They could reduce their hours or quit practicing completely but, in the process, could add to the already-existing shortage of medical professionals. They could also work with their health system to increase the price of their services and potentially use that extra money to help cover a medical malpractice lawsuit if one arises.

Those extra funds, though, could be put to a better use than addressing a lawsuit. Mr. Sappern gives the example of how a hospital might have to divert tens of millions of dollars each year from its balance sheet to maintain a fund against future potential claims. Decreasing that amount by a mere 5% to 10% could suddenly open up several hundred thousand dollars that could be used elsewhere, like improving patient care. “It’s truly unsustainable,” Mr. Sappern says of the concrete and intangible costs of medical malpractice. “We have to change how we’re doing things”.

On the whole, the number of medical malpractice cases – and the payouts for these cases - are ... [+] rising. From 2013 to 2023, the U.S court system saw an increase of about 67% in the number of medical malpractice verdicts awarding $10 million or more in damages to patients. In 2023, more than half of these verdicts awarded $25 million or more

He believes that, along with the cultural change Dr. Kolega mentioned, technology can help reduce subjectivity and, as a result, vulnerability to malpractice lawsuits. Both he and Dr. Kolega are C-suite executives at PeriGen, which aims to bring such data-driven insights and decisions to labor and delivery. Just last year, PeriGen announced a collaboration agreement with American Legal Connections: a group of health systems, legal and insurance firms that aim to reduce the incidence and impact of adverse medical outcomes.

Beyond the work of individual companies and organizations, six states currently have a cap on the monetary payouts for medical malpractice lawsuits to diminish the costs to hospitals and providers – and the ripple effect those costs may have on patients. On the federal level, Congress has introduced several bills over the past few years to try to lessen “the excessive burden the liability system places on the health care delivery system” as well.

Congress has introduced various Acts to limit excessive medical malpractice lawsuits and payments.

All patients should be able to receive professional and proper medical care and should have recourse if they truly experienced malpractice. However, the increasing number of medical malpractice lawsuits and their increasingly large payouts can have an adverse effect on future accessibility, cost, and quality of the care given by providers and received by patients. As Matthew Sappern concludes, “Society has to realize that nuclear awards ultimately reduce the availability of care for all”.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.