Pritzker Legal Research Center: Panama: International Team Project: Spring 2024 Topics

Business Regulation and Money Laundering

Databases

Northwestern subscribes to many databases that cover business law.

Recommended database:

Business Source Premier - Full text articles from regional, national and international business and trade journals.
Full list of databases here

Research Guides

International Business Transactions (UC Berkeley)*
International Business Transactions (GWU Law School)*
International Business Arbitration (Northwestern)

* for non-Northwestern research guides, you will need to use Northwestern catalog links to books, databases, etc.

Recommended Resources: Money Laundering

Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
IGO that develops policies to combat money laundering

The Panama Papers by Frederik Obermaier; Bastian Obermayer
ISBN: 1786070472
Publication Date: 2016-06-30
The story of the investigative journalists who broke the Panama Papers story.
Panama by International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept. Staff
ISBN: 1475559887
Publication Date: 2014-02-18
This paper discusses key findings of the Detailed Assessment Report for Panama on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations for Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT).
Money Laundering Blacklists by Michele Riccardi
ISBN: 9781000531039
Publication Date: 2022-01-31
This book discusses and critiques the concept of money laundering risk, its main determinants, and carries out a review of extant country ratings, ranging from official blacklists and grey lists, to media leaks and scholarly papers.

Recommended Resources: Tax Havens

Havens in a Storm by J. C. Sharman
ISBN: 0801445043
Publication Date: 2006-11-30
Since 1998 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has attempted to impose common tax regulations on more than three dozen small states. In a fascinating book based on fieldwork and interviews in twenty-two countries in the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, J. C. Sharman shows how the struggle was decided in favor of the tax havens, which eventually avoided common regulation.
Spiderweb Capitalism by Kimberly Kay Hoang
ISBN: 9780691229119
Publication Date: 2022-09-06
Spiderweb Capitalism takes you inside this shadow economy, uncovering the mechanics behind the invisible, mundane networks of lawyers, accountants, company secretaries, and fixers who facilitate the illicit movement of wealth across borders and around the globe. Spiderweb Capitalism sheds critical light on how global elites capitalize on risky frontier markets, and deepens our understanding of the paradoxical ways in which global economic growth is sustained through states where the line separating the legal from the corrupt is not always clear.
Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson
ISBN: 9780230105010
Publication Date: 2011-04-12
While the United States experiences recession and economic stagnation and European countries face bankruptcy, experts struggle to make sense of the crisis. Nicholas Shaxson, a former correspondent for the Financial Times and The Economist, argues that tax havens are a central cause of all these disasters.
Tax Havens and International Human Rights by Paul Beckett
ISBN: 9781138668874
Publication Date: 2017-10-09
This book takes a human rights-based approach to tax havens, and is a detailed analysis of structures and the laws that generate and support these.

Recommended Resources: Offshore Business Transactions

Offshore Secrecy Law by E. Edward Siemens
ISBN: 9782970060284
Publication Date: 2013-12-01
This book examines the conflicts between secrecy and transparency, and it should serve as a useful tool for onshore individuals and corporations, as well as their advisors and service providers, in considering the use of offshore corporations, trusts, foundations, or banks, and in understanding the current legal and regulatory environment that governs such offshore entities.
International Business Law by Mark Fenwick; Stefan Wrbka
ISBN: 9781509918058
Publication Date: 2018-06-28
This book provides an accessible introduction to selected new issues in transnational law, and connects them to existing theoretical debates on transnational business regulation.

Anti-Discrimination Laws

Recommended Resources

Indigenous tourism movements by Alexis C. Bunten and Nelson H.H. Graburn (editors)
ISBN: 9781442628298
Publication Date: 2018
The Politics of Ethnicity by David Maybury-Lewis (Editor)
ISBN: 0674009649
Publication Date: 2003-01-30
The book provides a valuable overview of current problems facing indigenous peoples in their relation with national states in Latin America.
Crafting Wounaan Landscapes by Julie Velásquez Runk
ISBN: 9780816534050
Publication Date: 2017-04-18
Panama in Black by Kaysha Corinealdi
ISBN: 9781478015895
Publication Date: 2022-09-16
In Panama in Black, Kaysha Corinealdi traces the multigenerational activism of Afro-Caribbean Panamanians as they forged diasporic communities in Panama and the United States throughout the twentieth century.
The Politics of Race in Panama by Sonja Stephenson Watson
ISBN: 9780813049861
Publication Date: 2014-03-30
Sonja Watson tells the story of two competing cultures: Afro-Hispanics whose ancestors came as slaves during the colonial period and West Indians whose families arrived more recently from English-speaking Caribbean countries to build the Panama Railroad and Panama Canal.
Between Alienation and Citizenship by Trevor O'Reggio
ISBN: 0761832378
Publication Date: 2006-04-13
Between Alienation and Citizenship traces the history of the Black West Indian immigrant society in Panama from 1914 to 1964. This book recounts the survival, determination, and courage of the Panamanian Black West Indian society and their struggle for inclusion in Panamanian culture.

Environmentalism

Databases

Northwestern subscribes to many databases that cover environmental law.

Recommended databases:

Agricultural & Environmental Science Collection offers full-text titles from around the world, including scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, and government publications
Ecology Abstracts includes papers on evolutionary biology, economics and systems analysis as they relate to ecosystems or the environment
Link to other Environmental Studies databases

Research Guides

Research guides will provide links to relevant sources on your topic.

GlobaLex - A Basic Guide to International Environmental Legal Research
Rights of Nature law library from the Center of Environmental Rights
Peace Palace Library - Environmental law

International Law

Foreign Law

Panama's Ministry of the Environment (in Spanish)

Recommended Resources: Tourism and the Environment

Ecotourism and Conservation in the Americas by A. Stronza (Editor); W. H. Durham (Editor)
ISBN: 9781845934002
Publication Date: 2008-10-30
Using detailed case studies and regional overviews, Ecotourism and Conservation in the Americas presents the views and experiences of scholars, practitioners, tour operators, and policy makers involved in ecotourism programs in the US and Latin America. The pros and cons of ecotourism for communities and ecosystems are explored, with particular attention paid to the ability of ecotourism to support sustainable development and conservation. The synthesis is inter-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and multi-scale and presents ecotourism as it is currently being practiced.
Sustainable ecotourism in Central America : comparative advantage in a globalized world by Andrew P. Miller
ISBN: 9780739180259
Publication Date: 2016
order via ILL
Environmental Education and Ecotourism by Fernando Ramírez, Josefina Santana
ISBN: 9783030019693
Publication Date: 2019
Order via ILL

How Tourism Can (and Does) Benefit the Poor and the Environment - A Case Study from Panama
Published by the World Bank - a description of a study on the economic costs and benefits of tourism which they carried out as part of a country environmental assessment in Panama

Recommended Resources: Rights of Nature

Panama recently passed law recognizing the rights of nature. You can read an article about it here, or find it on Legispan.

The politics of rights of nature : strategies for building a more sustainable future by Craig M. Kaufmann
ISBN: 0262366606
Publication Date: 2021
Rights of Nature by Daniel P. Corrigan (Editor); Markku Oksanen (Editor)
ISBN: 0367479583
Publication Date: 2021-05-16
This book critically examines the idea of natural objects as right-holders and analyzes legal cases, policies, and philosophical issues relating to this development.
The Rights of Nature by David R. Boyd
ISBN: 9781770412392
Publication Date: 2017-09-05
Cultures and laws are transforming to provide a powerful new approach to protecting the planet and the species with whom we share it. Lawyers from California to New York are fighting to gain legal rights for chimpanzees and killer whales, and lawmakers are ending the era of keeping these intelligent animals in captivity. In The Rights of Nature, noted environmental lawyer David Boyd tells this remarkable story, which is, at its heart, one of humans as a species finally growing up. Read this book and your world view will be altered forever.
Understanding the Rights of Nature by Mihnea Tanasescu
ISBN: 9783839454312
Publication Date: 2022-01-27
Rivers, landscapes, whole territories: these are the latest entities to be touched by the relentless expansion of rights in our world. But what does it mean for a landscape to have rights? Why would anyone want to recognize such rights, and to what end? Is it a good idea, and does it come with risks? This book presents the logic behind giving nature rights and discusses the most important cases in which this has happened. Mihnea Tanasescu offers clear answers to the thorny questions that the intrusion of nature into law is sure to raise.