| Panama and Paradise: What Have We Learned From the “Papers,” and Will It Make Any Difference? |
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Richard Gordon, J.D. – Professor of Law and Director, Financial Integrity Institute at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law |
Friday September 28, 2018
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Dampeer Room
Kelvin Smith Library *
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues:
Two years ago a leak of millions of documents, the “Panama Papers,” led to 300 reporters working through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists publishing a coordinated blast of stories through major outlets around the world, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for how it exposed “the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens.” This past November, a similarly massive trove appeared as the “Paradise Papers,” similarly illustrating pervasive tax evasion (at least) and not helping the images of, among others, Queen Elizabeth, Apple, Madonna, Vladimir Putin, and Bono.
A great set of stories, but have you heard much about them since? There have been a few visible results – especially in Pakistan, where the Supreme Court ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for corruption. And the law firm in the Panama story, Mossack Fonseca, went out of business. But are business practices changing, or governments cracking down? Professor Gordon offers his perspective as a leading scholar of international tax evasion.
All best regards,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Richard Gordon teaches courses on financial integrity, banking regulation, and international taxation. Prior to coming to Case Western Reserve, Gordon practiced international tax law in Washington, DC, and later taught courses in tax and corporate governance at the Harvard Law School, where he also served as deputy director of the International Tax Program. After leaving Harvard, Gordon joined the staff of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where he was senior counsel and senior financial sector expert, and where he worked on sovereign debt restructuring and financial integrity matters.
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Gordon served on the select IMF Task Force on Terrorism Finance and co-led the IMF and World Bank’s involvement in anti-money laundering and terrorism financing. He was the principal draftsperson of the preventive measures section of the first compliance assessment methodology for the Financial Action Task Force 40 Recommendations. He has participated in a number of FATF 40 compliance assessments in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Southeast Asia, and has published numerous scholarly articles, book chapters and research studies on anti-money laundering and terrorism as well as scholarly articles and book chapters on taxation.
Where We Meet
The Friday Public Affairs Lunch convenes each Friday when classes are in session, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Our programs are open to all and no registration is required. We usually meet in the Dampeer Room of Kelvin Smith Library.
* Kelvin Smith Library requires all entrants to show identification when entering the building, unless they have a university i.d. that they can magnetically scan. We are sorry if that seems like a hassle, but it has been Library policy for a while in response to security concerns. Please do not complain to the library staff at the entrance, who are just doing their jobs.
Parking Possibilities
The most convenient parking is the lot underneath Severance Hall. We regret that it is not free. From that lot there is an elevator up to street level (labeled as for the Thwing Center); it is less than 50 yards from that exit to the library entrance. You can get from the Severance garage to the library without going outside. Near the entry gates – just to the right if you were driving out – there is a door into a corridor. Walk down the corridor and there will be another door. Beyond that door you’ll find the entrance to an elevator which goes up to an entrance right inside the doors to Kelvin Smith Library.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
October 5: The Power to Pardon. With Michael Benza, Senior Instructor of Law, and moderated by Jonathan L. Entin, David L. Brennan Professor of Law Emeritus. ***Alternate Location: Mather House 100, 11201 Euclid Ave.***
October 12: Caesarism: Populism and Leadership in Ancient Rome and Greece. With Timothy Wutrich, Senior Instructor in Classics, and Rachel Sternberg, Associate Professor of Classics. ***Alternate Location: Mather House Room 100, 11201 Euclid Ave.***
October 19: The Context of Coverage: Ohio’s Medicaid Expansion. With Loren C. Anthes, Public Policy Fellow and Director, Medicaid Policy Center, Center for Community Solutions.
October 26: The Impact of Conflict on Health: A Family Physician’s Report from Bosnia and Afghanistan. With Geoff Hodgetts MD, Professor, Queens University School of Medicine.
November 2: Biennial Pre-Election Forecast Discussion. With Joseph White, Luxenberg Professor of Public Policy, and Andrew M. Lucker, Adjunct Professor of Political Science Alternate Location: Mather House Room 100, 11201 Euclid Ave.
November 9: Too Much Trust? Older Patients and Their Doctors. With Eva Kahana, Distinguished University Professor and Pierce T. and Elizabeth D. Robson Professor of Humanities, Department of Sociology.
November 16: Questions and Answers About Recycling Plastics. With John Blackwell, Leonard Case Jr. Professor Emeritus, Macromolecular Science and Engineering.
November 23: Thanksgiving break.
November 30: Just How Powerful is Putin? With Stephen Crowley, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Oberlin College.
December 7: Union Decline in a Populist Era: The Experience of Western Democracies. With Chris Howell, James Monroe Professor of Politics, Oberlin College. |
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September 24, 2018
If you would like to reply, submit items for inclusion, or not receive this weekly e-mail please send a notice to: padg@case.edu
Upcoming Events
STATE COURTS IN A FEDERAL SYSTEM
A discussion with The Honorable Joan L. Larsen, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Tuesday September 25, 2018, 4:30 p.m., CWRU School of Law, Moot Courtroom (A59), 11075 East Blvd., Cleveland, Ohio 44106. Free and open to the public.
State courts are the courts most likely to affect an ordinary person’s life. Development of the common law of property, tort and contract, as well as the law governing our most personal relationships, family law, are the province of state courts. Most criminal law is state law; and most criminal prosecutions happen in state court. In these, and in other areas, state courts have been innovators. For example, state courts have taken the lead in developing new ways to work with non-violent criminal offenders, through the creation of problem-solving courts such as veterans’ treatment courts, drug courts, and mental health courts. And while most people think only of the U.S. Constitution when they think of their rights, each of our fifty states has its own constitution too, whose interpretation, by state judges, is not formally constrained by the parallel work of the federal courts. In other words, state courts matter. In fact, there was no guarantee that federal courts, besides the Supreme Court, would even exist. Our Constitution did not require it—Congress had the discretion, but not duty, to create lower federal courts. But as the federal court system has grown, it has developed an ever-evolving, complicated relationship with the state courts. There are many doctrines, such as abstention and procedural requirements in habeas corpus that are designed to respect the work of the state courts and recognize the states’ primacy. But how robustly should federal courts apply these doctrines? And how much deference should state courts give to federal court resolution of the parallel problems that confront them? These, and many other questions, are inherent in our federal system.
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
E-Cigarettes and the Precautionary Principle: the limits of trying to “first, do no harm” in a dangerous world
A Miles and Elena Zaremski Law-Medicine Forum, a lecture and discussion with Lynn Kozlowski Ph.D., Professor of Community Health and Health Behavior, State University of New York at Buffalo, Monday October 8, 2018, Noon – 1:00 p.m., CWRU School of Law, Moot Courtroom (A59), 11075 East Blvd., Cleveland, Ohio 44106. Free and open to the public.
The invention and further development of e-cigarettes has divided the tobacco control movement. Most U.S. authorities worry that e-cigarettes will re-normalize tobacco use, provide a gateway to regular cigarettes through trapping young people in nicotine addiction, help cigarette users limit the effects of public smoking laws, and otherwise halt progress towards eliminating tobacco use. Following this logic, CWRU banned e-cigarettes as part of its tobacco-free campus policy. Other experts emphasize that the evidence so far strongly suggests that e-cigarettes are dramatically safer than combustible tobacco products, so if e-cigarettes replaced those products the public health benefits would be huge. British public health specialists have been much closer to this “harm reduction” position.
Lynn Kozlowski has long been one of the leading tobacco policy researchers in North America, with a record too extensive to describe (but see https://sphhp.buffalo.edu/community-health-and-health-behavior/faculty-and-staff/faculty-directory/lk22.html) In recent years he also has become one of the most prominent American advocates of the harm-reduction approach to e-cigarette issues. Join us as he explains some of the reasons why the dominant position within the U.S. tobacco control community should be questioned.
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