The Debt Limit and the Constitution: How the Fourteenth Amendment Forbids Fiscal Obstructionism

The statutory debt limit restricts the funds that can be borrowed to meet the government\u27s financial obligations. On the other hand, the Fourteenth Amendment\u27s Public Debt Clause mandates that all the government\u27s financial obligations be met. This Note argues that the Public Debt Clause is violated when government actions create substantial doubt about the validity of the public debt, a standard that encompasses government actions that fall short of defaulting on or directly repudiating the public debt. The Note proposes a test to determine when substantial doubt is created. This substantial doubt test analyzes the political and economic environment at the time of the government\u27s actions and the subjective apprehension exhibited by debt holders. Applying this test, this Note concludes that Congress\u27s actions during the 1995–96 and 2011 debt-limit debates violated the Public Debt Clause, though Congress\u27s conduct during the debate over the debt limit in 2002 did not. And under a departmentalist understanding of executive power, a conclusion of this nature would be the basis for the president to ignore the debt limit when congressional actions create unconstitutional doubt about the validity of the public debt

Rethinking the Security Architecture of North East Asia

In the aftermath of the Cold War, many began to question the continuing efficacy, or at least call for reform, of collective security structures such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations Security Council. Yet, North East Asia never enjoyed a formal, institutionalised collective security structure. As Russia and the United States recede and China emerges in North East Asia, this article questions whether now is the time to consider such an arrangement. Financially, Japan and South Korea are locked into a symbiotic relationship with China (as is the United States), while the government in Beijing continues to militarise and lay territorial and maritime claims to large areas of the region. Moreover, the regime in North Korea, with its new nuclear capabilities, remains unpredictable. Consequently, central components to the question of collective security in North East Asia are the equally vexing questions of what to do about North Korea and whether a new formalised security arrangement would include or exclude the People's Republic of China

‘In the City of Blinding Lights’: Indigeneity, Cultural Studies and the Errants of Colonial Nostalgia

US-based cultural studies often prioritises issues of race, class, and gender within popular representations of the ‘other’ at the expense of undertheorising, especially within its own settler colonial history, issues of indigeneity, colonialism, and imperialism. This essay takes as a case study the US 2008 Democratic presidential primary cycle in which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ran for their party’s nomination by claiming that their success would fulfil either the promises of the civil rights movement or second-wave feminism. Through the course of the primary season, each of these movements was framed within the larger US national myth of Manifest Destiny with its nostalgic struggles against an ‘unforgiving wilderness’. Indigenous critical theory, as it engages US cultural studies and theories of resistance, recentres issues of colonialism within the historical and material cultural productions of the nation and challenges the political discourse of liberatory inclusion and freedom to acknowledge the colonisation of indigenous peoples upon which ‘inclusion’ and ‘freedom’ are built

Combating the Ilicit Art Trade in the European Union: Europol\u27s Role in Recovering Stolen Artwork

In order to provide a context for a discussion of how to effectively combat the art theft problem, Part II of this comment will examine the vari- ous incentives that encourage art theft. Parts I, IV, and V will explain the background and key provisions of two international conventions and one regional directive that address the problem of art theft in the EU. Part VI will analyze the strengths and shortcomings of the existing legal regime ac- cording to the two conventions and a directive. Part VII will discuss three mechanisms that have been somewhat successful in the recovery of stolen artwork and will examine the inadequacies of these mechanisms. Part VIII will propose and evaluate the potential role for Europol in combating art theft. This last section will explain that Europol offers a promising com- plement to existing mechanisms because it provides a cooperative law- enforcement approach that focuses on centralized communication and data transmission, the sharing of resources and expertise, and the coordination of investigations

The Arctic in World Environmental History

For millions of years, the Arctic has been the world\u27s most important barometer of global change and amplifier of global warming. For twenty thousand years, the Arctic has been the homeland of modern human settlement, and it has played a central role in the interplay between global climate change and human migration throughout Eurasia and the Americas. Since the late fifteenth century, Arctic aboriginal peoples, lands, and seas have been thoroughly integrated into the international history of European trade, capitalism, and colonization; the territorial expansion of modern nation states; and the transnational strategic history since the outset of the Cold War, including the continued basing of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines throughout the Arctic region. Appreciation of this international history can provide lessons for contemporary policymakers to help mitigate grave risks to human life and biodiversity in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. For example, this Article calls for negotiations between the U.S., NATO, and the Russian Federation on the basis of Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev\u27s 1987 proposal to transform the Arctic into a zone of peace and, specifically, to establish a nuclear free-zone in northern Europe. In conclusion, this Article identifies how deeply embedded global systems of political economy and international relations continue to shape recent developments in the Arctic at this time of exacerbated climate change and resulting ecological crisis. Appreciation of the Arctic\u27s environmental history can help decision-makers to more knowledgeably and effectively support indigenous self-determination, resource conservation, and environmental stewardship throughout the circumpolar bioregion