Tenth Trade Law Fall Update: “Back to the Future: Trade and Customs Law and Enforcement in 2025

Academic Partners: American Society of International Law, Customs and International Trade Bar Association, and Greater Cleveland International Lawyers Group. For exporters, importers, lawyers, and compliance professionals, 2025 has been a year of nonstop and disruptive change in tariffs, policies, and practices, with a constant stream of announcements, events, and negotiations. On Friday, November 7, the Tenth Annual CWRU School of Law Trade Law Fall Update will cover key need-to-know issues for the trade and customs community in the unique environment of 2025. Professor Juscelino Colares and the Organizing Committee welcome you to this program, to be held online via Zoom free of charge. The discussion begins with our first panel on coping with tariffs and trade restrictions based on the content of an imported product or how it was manufactured. How do companies and counsel look back in supply chains – for instance, to report to Customs on origin or value of content in tariffed “derivative” products? We then shift to the timely topic of refunds – how importers can get repaid after duties change, or in the wake of litigation, and what steps to take to preserve rights to refunds. The hot topics of the day in trade and Customs law will be the focus of our final morning panel – including the Supreme Court’s review of IEEPA tariffs, tariff implementation and enforcement, and other issues. The Hon. Leo M. Gordon, U.S. Court of International Trade, will introduce public opinion expert Bruce Stokes, our keynoter, who will talk about where the American public is on the trade and tariff issues of today, and what it means for the future of trade policy and American engagement with the world. Professor Colares will conclude the Update with brief closing comments

Patient Autonomy, Public Safety, and Drivers with Cognitive Decline

With a growing elderly population, cognitive decline in drivers has become a significant public safety concern. Currently, over thirty-two million individuals who are seventy or older have driver’s licenses, and that number is growing quickly. In addition, almost ten percent of U.S. seniors (those sixty-five and older) have dementia, and an additional twenty-two percent have mild cognitive impairment. Between a quarter and a half of individuals with mild to moderate dementia still drive. As cognitive abilities such as memory, attention, and decision-making skills deteriorate, a driver\u27s ability to operate a vehicle safely can be compromised. This not only puts the driver at risk but also endangers passengers, other motorists, and pedestrians. As the population ages, the number of drivers experiencing cognitive decline is increasing, escalating the risk of accidents./= / \u3e/= / \u3eFor many older adults, however, driving is a key aspect of independence and mobility. Losing the ability to drive can lead to social isolation, dependence on others, and a decline in overall well-being. Understanding and addressing the challenges of cognitive decline in relation to driving is crucial for maintaining elderly individuals’ quality of life. Nonetheless, determining when someone should stop driving due to cognitive decline is especially difficult because cognitive decline often progresses gradually and is challenging to assess./= / \u3e/= / \u3eCurrent legal mechanisms fail to resolve the tension between promoting personal autonomy and protecting public safety, and existing approaches to the problem are unsatisfactory. Requiring road tests of every older adult is both overly intrusive and economically inefficient. At the same time, however, revoking driving privileges only after an accident has occurred creates a public safety hazard. Without an effective system of regulation, informal practices emerge. Medical professionals who recognize that a patient’s driving is likely to create a safety risk may either ignore the matter entirely or pressure family members to take the keys away from their loved one. And when accidents do happen, family members are sometimes sued for failing to prevent their loved one from taking the wheel./= / \u3e/= / \u3eThis Article recommends a framework for enhanced medical and regulatory protocols to navigate the intricacies of driving with cognitive decline. It recognizes that earlier efforts to solve the problem have often failed because they relied too heavily on a single point of responsibility. Our proposed framework, by contrast, creates a connection between the medical provider and the motor vehicle regulator and sets out clear lines of responsibility. The Article develops recommendations for effective interventions, analyzing the role that physicians should play and proposing legislative changes. Driving with cognitive decline is a multifaceted challenge that impacts public safety, personal independence, family relationships, legal rights, and healthcare practices. Addressing it effectively requires a balanced and thoughtful approach that considers the needs and rights of all stakeholders

The Legal Profession Must Confront Its Role in Slavery

Acknowledging and discussing the modern citation of slave cases is a first step. The Citing Slavery Project provides a database of slave cases and the modern cases that continue to cite them as precedent. American slavery generated thousands of legal disputes. Lawyers legitimized slavery by fitting cases involving enslaved people into standard legal categories. The law of slavery became an important part of American law. Such support from lawyers helped slave commerce function. American courts directly participated in slave commerce, frequently auctioning enslaved people to satisfy debts. These sales even took place on courthouse steps. Courthouse auctions forcibly separated families. They helped enslavers to concentrate economic power. After emancipation, lawyers continued to treat slave cases as good law. They even enforced debts based on contracts for enslaved people. The failure of the legal profession to grapple with its role in the law of slavery is a failure of transitional justice. Lawyers have obscured their role in slavery by never fully acknowledging it. Today, American judges and lawyers continue to cite slave cases for fundamental legal propositions. These citation practices cause serious harm and reveal the legal profession’s ethical limitations.Justin Simard, assistant professor, Michigan State University College of Law, has research that studies the modern citation of slavery and will present on this topic

At What Cost: Medicare’s Cost- Saving Measures in Skilled Nursing Facilities and Their Impact on Vulnerable Populations

As the highest spender of health care in the world, the United States continues to look for ways to reduce its spending. As the main health insurance provider for the elderly and disabled, Medicare shares this mission. Unfortunately, some of Medicare’s cost-saving initiatives in one of its most critical care settings, Skilled Nursing Facilities, cause disproportionately negative impacts on vulnerable populations. This Note analyzes three of Medicare’s cost-saving measures in Skilled Nursing Facilities, namely value-based purchasing programs, the twenty-day limit on full coverage, and the practical matter provision. This Note highlights how these measures have a disparate negative effect on the most vulnerable populations, and then recommends solutions to mitigate these outcomes while still allowing overall cost savings for patients and the government

Discriminating Alignment in the Innovation Sphere

Contracts play an important role in innovation. As a result, some. scholars have proposed theories highlighting contract provisions as devices that can serve to informally enforce agreements and build trust between parties. Others emphasize the hierarchical provisions between firms to promote efficiency. Yet another group views these agreements as a mechanism to institutionalize learning and protect property interests. This Article offers a new theory. To understand a firm’s contractual choices and governance, we must look at how the same provisions in different contracts may have distinct meanings or operate differently in different contexts. So, scholars must give context to these contracts by evaluating how specific industries utilize these provisions in different ways. Separate industries may use the same provisions––like information sharing, for example––within their contracts, but they will pair these provisions with different clauses or private strategies, resulting in different governance choices. This Article looks at two areas––the manufacturing and biopharma industries­­––because these fields use collaborative agreements with similar provisions and suggests that the same provisions actually work in very different ways. The theory of discriminating alignment suggests that parties within these two industries use contractual and other strategy choices differently in order to meet their separate goals in a cost minimizing way. This Article reaches this conclusion based on qualitative interviews to learn about how participants in the biopharma industry use provisions and understand them. It draws on prior empirical work and scholarship to analyze how the same provisions operate differently within the manufacturing industry. It concludes that the same contract provisions operate differently in manufacturing and biopharma, leading to a divergence in governance choices. In manufacturing, where relational sanctions are possible, parties can combine informal enforcement with formal provisions to achieve their goals. This is consistent with a “braiding theory” of formal and informal enforcement. By contrast, biopharma parties have a joint interest in collaborating early on to achieve profits and success, which renders informal enforcement unhelpful. Biopharma uses formal provisions––including information transfer provisions––because they are the best means of facilitating a successful complex project. However, when the interests of parties within biopharma diverge, property provisions take over. This Article echoes Professor Macaulay’s view that to to understand governance within a specific industry, the industry must be analyzed using qualitative interviews

Climate Liberalism and Decarbonization

Existing climate policy goals require dramatic and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Achieving such reductions within the desired time frame is a tremendous challenge, particularly through conventional regulatory approaches. The conventional approach to environmental problems is to treat such problems as “market failures” that can be corrected by government intervention, such as through regulation. Such approaches are constrained by various sources of government failure that are exacerbated by the scale and scope of the problem. The knowledge problem, administrative transaction costs, and limits on regulatory throughput capacity all hamper the use of traditional regulatory tools to address the problem of climate change. An alternative approach to environmental problems views such problems not as “market failures” but as a failure to have markets in relevant contexts. This approach counsels looking for ways to extend market institutions to cover environmental resources and encourage decentralized, spontaneous responses to price signals as a means of encouraging environmentally desirable behavior. Such approaches have been successful at helping to address many environmental concerns and at encouraging net dematerialization in advanced market economies. These experiences offer lessons for how to more effectively encourage decarbonization and address climate change. Among other things, they suggest a greater emphasis on the conditions that foster innovation and a greater reliance on fiscal tools than on regulatory interventions. This Essay was prepared for the 2024 Iowa Law Review Symposium, “The Economic Implications of Climate Change.

From One Prison to Another: The Inordinate Criminalization of Women Who Kill Abusive Partners and a Proposed U.N. Response

Paradoxically, criminal justice systems around the world punish women who kill abusive partners with inordinate sentences despite explicitly recognizing the victimization that led them to homicide. This Note examines how universally entrenched gender stereotypes lead to such overcriminalization and amount to a violation of women’s rights to equality before the law. This Note then proposes a U.N. resolution offering guidelines for criminal justice systems to craft appropriate judicial responses to women’s survival strategies

From Free Trade to Strategic Constraints: U.S.-Led Sanctionsand Export Controls Against Russia and China

This article examines the evolving role of sanctions and export controls led by the United States (U.S.) in shaping global trade dynamics, particularly in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s technological and military advancements. The U.S. has expanded its use of extraterritorial export control measures, particularly the Foreign Direct Product Rules, to regulate the global flow of strategic commodities, technology, and software. The study explores the extensive sanctions and export control regimes imposed on Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including restrictions on energy, finance, and military-related technologies. The article also evaluates Canada’s parallel regulatory framework and compares its scope, enforcement, and effectiveness with that of the U.S. Furthermore, this work delves into U.S. efforts to curb China’s technological development through semiconductor export restrictions, targeting companies, such as Huawei. This strategy has escalated trade tensions, compelling China to develop self-sufficiency in critical industries. However, the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions and trade restrictions remains uncertain. While they have caused economic strain on targeted nations, they have also fueled closer alliances between Russia and China, encouraged retaliatory measures, and strained relationships with key U.S. trade partners. Additionally, the legality of these restrictions under the World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations remains contested, with China challenging U.S. export controls as discriminatory and trade-restrictive. If the U.S.’s coercive trade policies alienate allies, disrupt global supply chains, and violate WTO commitments, they could backfire, which could hinder American businesses, isolate the U.S. from international markets, and ultimately undermine its ability to maintain technological and military supremacy

The U.S. Approach to AI Regulation: Federal Laws, Policies, and Strategies Explained

This article comprehensively analyzes how the United States (“U.S.”) approaches artificial intelligence (“AI”) governance. Unlike the European Union’s AI Act, which provides a legally binding framework, the U.S. adopts a decentralized, sector-specific regulatory strategy, primarily driven by voluntary commitments from private companies and guided by federal agencies. Additionally, state-level initiatives, often influenced by specific local concerns, contribute to a diverse regulatory environment. The article examines federal legislative and executive initiatives, agency regulations, and industry participation, highlighting the challenges this fragmented approach poses for achieving uniformity and addressing critical issues such as privacy, security, and accountability. It also explores the broader implications of the U.S. model on global AI governance and the potential need for more comprehensive legislation to balance innovation with ethical considerations and risk management