Michigan, Rutgers, and the Michigan Journal of International Law host the Treaty Override Virtual Symposium today (zoom link here):
This symposium will consider the legitimacy and scope of treaty overrides, i.e., situations in which a country unilaterally changes the outcome of a bilateral treaty through its domestic law. This practice appears to be unlawful under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (which is generally accepted as customary international law) but is constitutional in certain countries, including the United States. There has been a long, ongoing debate on the advisability of such overrides and the conditions under which they are possible in the United States. These days, the debate centers on whether some parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 were an override. The symposium will focus on this debate and compare it to similar debates in other jurisdictions.
10:30 – 11:00 AM: Welcome and Opening Remarks
- Gracy Brody (Editor in Chief, Michigan Journal of International Law)
- Monica Hakimi (Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, Michigan; Google Scholar)
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM: Treaty Overrides Abroad
- Philip Baker (Oxford)
- Tsilly Dagan (Oxford; Google Scholar)
- Craig Elliffe (Auckland; Google Scholar)
- Lilian Faulhaber (Georgetown; Google Scholar)
- Georg Kofler (Vienna; Google Scholar)
- Nicola Sartori (Milano-Bicocca)
- Richard Vann (Sydney)
1:30 – 3:00 PM: Treaty Overrides in the United States
- Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar)
- Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar)
- David Rosenbloom (NYU)
- Fadi Shaheen (Rutgers; Google Scholar)
- Bret Wells (Houston; Google Scholar)
- Diana Wollman (Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, New York)
3:00 – 3:45 PM: Discussion and Q&A
- Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar) (moderator)
- Fadi Shaheen (Rutgers; Google Scholar) (moderator)
