Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Pascale Dubois

J.D. Seminar 166 (cross-listed) | 2 credit hours

International efforts to prevent, detect and deter corruption have become an increasingly important focus for international lawyers and their counterparts in business, government and civil society. Multilateral development banks, national governments and NGOs all identify public corruption as a serious impediment to good governance and comprehensive economic development. This consensus in the development community has been matched by a sharp increase in the enforcement of national anticorruption instruments, most notably the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and, in more recent years, the equivalent laws of other OECD countries. These emergent realities are changing the way that business is conducted in the global economy, and there are significant implications for practitioners in both the public and private sectors.

This course aims to introduce students to the international legal framework of the fight against corruption, as well as the major players in those efforts. Topics will include (i) the scope and effectiveness of the major anticorruption instruments, with a focus on the FCPA, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions, and the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC); (ii) the methodologies employed by key national and international enforcement agencies; (iii) multi-stakeholder initiatives to recover stolen assets and tackle money laundering; and (iv) emerging trends in private sector prevention and compliance initiatives. The course will also explore the special dilemmas faced by decision-makers in the aid community, where donor programs that aim to improve governance and reduce corruption in poor countries must be balanced against other development priorities.

The course will be taught from the vantage point of practitioners in the field, with an emphasis on the cooperative nature of global anticorruption efforts. Given the dynamic nature of anticorruption initiatives, the course will take an interdisciplinary, interactive approach to the subject matter, and will introduce perspectives from academic texts, policy papers and media. The goal is to provide students with a strong theoretical foundation in international anticorruption law while exploring the day-to-day realities faced by lawyers and other experts practicing in the field.

Students will complete a research paper 20-25 pages in length, and will also be asked to present their topic to the class during the last two course sessions.