The Distribution of Rents in Supply Chain Industries: The Case of High Oil Corn

Value-enhanced crops (VEC's) have been the focus of "second-generation" genetically modified (GM) crops. The market power granted by intellectual property rights (IPR) and the use of contractual arrangements in VEC gene and seed production have fostered a move toward tightly-aligned supply chain industries. This paper suggests and tests an analytical methodology for examining a number of issues in tightly-aligned supply chain industries: (1) the distributions of potential monopolistic and monopsonistic rents, (2) choices of licensing intellectual property versus in-house seed production and distribution (3) implications of alternative marketing strategies and elasticities of demand on the magnitudes of rents, and (4) determining impacts on different stages within the supply chain and on substitute commodities. The high-oil corn industry is used as a case study.equilibrium displacement, high-oil corn, mathematical programming, value-enhanced crops, Crop Production/Industries, Industrial Organization,

Sosa, Customary International Law, and the Continuing Relevance of Erie

Ten years ago, the conventional wisdom among international law academics was that customary international law (CIL) had the status of self-executing federal common law to be applied by courts without any need for political branch authorization. This modern position came under attack by so-called revisionist critics who argued that CIL had the status of federal common law only in the relatively rare situations in which the Constitution or political branches authorized courts to treat it as such. Modern position proponents are now claiming that the Supreme Court\u27s 2004 decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain confirms that CIL has the status of self-executing federal common law. As this Article explains, the decision in Sosa did not in fact embrace the modern position, and, indeed, is best read as rejecting it. Commentators who construe Sosa as embracing the modern position have confounded the automatic incorporation of CIL as domestic federal law in the absence of political branch authorization (i.e., the modern position) with the entirely different issue of whether and to what extent a particular statute, the Alien Tort Statute ( ATS ), authorizes courts to apply CIL as domestic federal law. The Article also explains how CIL continues to be relevant to domestic federal common law despite Sosa\u27s rejection of the modern position. The fundamental flaw of the modern position is that it ignores the justifications for, and limitations on, post-Erie federal common law. As the Article shows, however, there are a number of contexts in addition to the ATS in which it is appropriate for courts to develop federal common law by reference to CIL, including certain jurisdictional contexts not amenable to state regulation (namely admiralty and interstate disputes), and gap-filling and interpretation of foreign affairs statutes and treaties. The Article concludes by considering several areas of likely debate during the next decade concerning the domestic status of CIL: corporate aiding and abetting liability under the ATS; application of CIL to the war on terrorism; and the use of foreign and international materials in constitutional interpretation

The President\u27s Unconstitutional Treatymaking

The President of the United States frequently signs international agreements but postpones ratification pending Senate consent. Under international law, a state that signs a treaty subject to later ratification must avoid acts that would defeat the treaty\u27s object and purpose until the nation clearly communicates its intent not to join. As a result, the President in signing assumes interim treaty obligations before the treatymaking process is complete. Despite the pervasiveness of this practice, scholars have neglected the question of its constitutionality. As this Article demonstrates, the practice is unconstitutional. Neither the text, structure, nor history of the Constitution supports the practice. Nor can the practice be justified under the President\u27s authority to enter sole executive agreements or as a longstanding practice in which Congress has acquiesced. The result, ironically, is that the President often acts unconstitutionally when employing the treatymaking process outlined in Article II of the Constitution. Yet the President need not avoid the Article II process to cure this constitutional defect. The President avoids constitutional violation by consenting to international agreements through means other than signature subject to ratification