Role of Legal Theory in Legal Education

The article addresses the role of legal theory in legal education. Today, a multitude of perspectives is present within legal theory and, as a subject, it is not as distinct as it is sometimes claimed to be. It is evident when considering syllabuses in the Nordic countries that nearly all LLM programmes have ambitions to teach legal theory as embracing a multitude of theoretical and methodological perspectives. This multitude of perspectives promises adaptable content for the subject of legal theory in various legal contexts, and could facilitate a reflection on how knowledge is acquired and why. The challenge addressed in the article is the presence of explicit or implicit ideas from the subject of legal theory as comprising a coherent “legal method” and a specific list of accepted theories. The persistence of such ideas is scrutinised in this article with help of the concepts of “professional knowledge” and “scholarly knowledge”. In order to navigate the complex field of legal theories, students need meta-reflective skills, which means the ability to reflect upon the underlying complexity and multitude of the subject. This is shown by a case study from the Department of Law at the University of Gothenburg, together with examples from curricula and textbooks from legal theory courses across the Nordic countries.

Teaching International Law in Times of Change and Crisis

This article is a contribution to scholarship on the teaching of international law, in general, and in Nordic countries, in particular. The article draws on lessons from international law as situated and embedded in national and regional politics and systems of governance. That is, although international law is international, it is approached and implemented differently depending on situation and location. The article emphasizes that contemporary teaching of international law should engage with how situation and location matters for how international law is approached and it should also reflect contemporary global challenges. The article uses the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan as an example, as well as experiences from teaching international law with the help of a peacemaking role-play focused on the conflict in Afghanistan.

Annex

This is an annex to the articles in the special issue on Nordic Legal Education: A Situated Gothenburg Perspective and contains of tables and descriptions of 17 Nordic LLM. programmes.

Special Issue Introduction

Not relevant as this is the introduction to the special issue.

The potential for new materialist justice via Nordic feminist perspectives of law

The Nordic feminist perspectives in law have traditionally been relatively successful in advocating, and effectuating, a feminist perspective of justice both within law and the society. However, Nordic feminist perspectives of law have at least to some degree, at this stage been limited to questions of equality between men and women and to the production of justice within the boundaries of the nation-state. In this article, I take the challenge upon myself of elaborating the notion of justice advanced by new materialist theory as a means to infuse the Nordic feminist perspective in, and on, law. This is pursued by reading new materialist theory and Nordic feminist perspectives of law against each other. In sum, the reading suggests that a focus on new materialist justice could be used to infuse Nordic feminist legal perspectives on justice by both shifting the understanding of law, and justice, as well as its contextual focus.

Silenced Voices

In this article I examine from a legal point of view some of the consequences for women, and hence for society in general, of online sexist and misogynist abuse in a Swedish context. I argue that one effect is that women’s living space online is demarcated and ultimately, that it threatens women’s possibilities to participate in public debate online. An everyday life perspective and the continuum of sexual violence, both part of a feminist legal perspective, are used as a theoretical framework to show how online abuse is silencing women. The situation demands action from the state, in order to safeguard freedom of expression and, consequently, democracy. I argue that in this particular situation, two basic aspects of freedom of expression collide: the one most emphasised, the prohibition of censorship, and the less acknowledged aspect, i.e. a diversity of voices. Deficient ways to handle sexist and misogynist online abuse leads to indirect censorship where women’s voices are silenced. Hence, the state must take action not to fail to guarantee justice for all. There are many initiatives addressing problems of online abuse, both internationally and nationally. In this article I seek to capture and examine the Swedish policy and legal regulation (criminal law and freedom of expression) in this area to sketch the legal situation, to highlight ongoing initiatives and pointing out lacunas and obstacles that needs to be dealt with to guarantee a diversity of voices.

Implementing a (global?) minimum corporate income tax

Seven years have passed since the BEPS Action Plan was launched by the OECD, and Action 1 identified the tax challenges derived from the digitalization of the economy as a relevant area to be addressed. However, no concrete recommendations were delivered and, in an increasingly digitized economy, countries started acting unilaterally. Against this situation, as from January 2019, the stream of work at the OECD has changed and, apparently, a novel era - “BEPS 2.0” - has begun under the slogan of working on a “without prejudice” Almost eight years have passed since the BEPS Action Plan was launched by the OECD and Action 1 identified corporate income tax challenges derived from the digitalization of the economy as a relevant area to be addressed. As from January 2019, the stream of work at the OECD has changed. Apparently, a novel era - “BEPS 2.0” - has begun under the slogan of working on a “without prejudice” basis and a two-pillar approach with the aim of reaching an agreement on a global solution. Though the author recognizes the need to find a coordinated answer, she believes that in the construction of said solution, attention should be given to specific features and policy preferences evidenced by developing countries. Under this scenario, this contribution focuses on the so-called “Pillar Two” and assesses its “Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) proposal” from said perspective. After her analysis, the author concludes that this rushed political-driven proposal not only has been designed in the benefit of major and more advanced economies, but it goes far more beyond “BEPS”. In this vein, the author advocates for concentrating the efforts and resources on a transparent discussion that directly addresses efficient and fairer nexus and profit allocation rules – main concern for developing countries and, in the autor´s view, the base problem to be solved.

The Entitlement to Tax

As a result of the significant need for additional discussions on the inequality which currently shape international tax matters, Copenhagen Business School hosted a conference concerning inequality within the international tax regime in September 2020. The conference brought together researchers at the forefront of their respective fields to identify, discuss, and to underline future challenges associated to inequality in the international tax context. This special issue is an outcome of papers presented at the conference and concerns the relationship between developing and developed states with an emphasis on present shortcomings when allocating taxing rights in a fair and sustainable manner.

Power and sovereignty

How do nation states relate to each other in terms of power? How do they relate to private parties in terms of power? Nation states are often thought of as sovereign to tax. In a legal sense that may be true. However, to be legally sovereign is not the same thing as being able to effectively exercise sovereignty. The mobility of capital and businesses, or at least the perception of their mobility, is increasingly pressuring sovereignty to tax. To shed light on the economic constrains on nation states and the beliefs about such constrains, this article introduces the concept of economic-ideological forces and contends that sovereignty should be understood in a way that encompasses these forces. Otherwise, it does not provide an adequate account of power and thus becomes a tool for maintaining established power relations.

Developing Developing-Country Tax Systems

Experts from the North have long tried to teach countries in the South how to tax. For decades, they assumed the main challenges were domestic and there was a right answer to be found somewhere in the developed world that could be replicated everywhere else. Only more recently have they dedicated more attention to the international realm, yet their solutions remain tied to technical rules designed by a few specialists, as exemplified by the OECD Secretariat’s “Unified Approach” for the taxation of the digital economy. From a critical and historical socio-legal perspective, this Article argues that such technocratic approaches are set to fail less-developed nations for as long as we continue to overlook the background causes of weak taxation at both the national and international levels. These involve difficulties in applying complex rule sets, but also the very way in which global tax policy is developed, who influences the process, and the resulting distributive consequences.