Description: Property law and its reform are potentially a significant economic development strategy for developing countries — and countries in general. Intellectual property laws, geographical indications regulations, relational contracts for product innovation, property like protections for numerous activities are among the proposals. However, numerous other legal rules and business practices determine the value and utility of protected investments. Legal rules and trade practices mandating specific production procedures and traditional methods. Government programs that support and stimulate industries in certain sectors. Creditor and debtor laws that provide improved credit terms and repayment guarantees. Tax regulations. Labor and employment laws that incentivize apprenticeships and other work arrangements for both the formal and informal sectors. Moreover, business practices and marketing strategies are a crucial dimension of building value. As such, an interdisciplinary approach both within and outside of law is necessary. All of these dimensions, and others, must be considered simultaneously as part of the legally protected value creation process. Experts from various fields will join us to explore the elements required to capitalize on legal and cultural know-how and to promote greater sustainability.
Date: April 4th, 2025
Time: 9:30am-5:00pm
Location: Rafael Diaz-Balart Hall, Law Library Room 1081
Host:
Jorge L. Esquirol, FIU College of Law
Participants:
Helena Alviar García, Sciences Po School of Law, Paris, France
Lorenzo Bairati, University of Gastronomical Sciences at Pollenzo, Italy
Pablo Baquero, HEC Paris France
Domenico di Micco, University of Torino, Italy
Bianca Gardella Tedeschi, University of Piemonte Orientale, Italy
Ileana Porras, University of Miami, School of Law
Barbara Pozzo, University of Insubria, Como Italy
Ediberto Roman, FIU College of Law
Hannibal Travis, FIU College of Law
Dina Waked, Sciences Po School of Law, Paris, France
Schedule:
April 4
9:30-9:40 am – Welcome Remarks – RDB, Law Library Room 1081
Dean Antony Page and Prof. Jorge L. Esquirol
9:40 – 12:40 – Panel 1 – RDB, Law Library, Room 1081
Moderator: Ediberto Román, FIU College of Law
Panelists:
Domenico di Micco, University of Turin, Italy. “The Protection of Geographical Indications under Comparative Lens whether Law artificially creates Scarcity of Goods”
Jorge Esquirol, FIU College of Law. “Heterodox Legal Informality”
Bianca Gardella Tedeschi, University of Piemonte Orientale, Italy. “The Making of Italian Rice”
Barbara Pozzo, University of Insubria, Como, Italy. “European Union Geographical Indications Regulation”
Dina Waked, Sciences Po Paris, France. “Threads of Empire and Capital: The Political Economy of Egyptian Cotton (1800s-2000s)”
12:40 – 2:00 p.m. – Lunch – Interior Courtyard, First Floor RDB (registered participants only)
2 – 5 p.m. – Panel 2 – RDB, Law Library, Room 1081
Moderator: Ileana Porras, University of Miami School of Law
Panelists:
Helena Alviar, Sciences Po Paris, France. “Access to Land in Progressive Constitutions: Starting a Dialogue”
Lorenzo Bairati, Univesity of Gastronomical Sciences, Italy. “Geographical Indications and the Protection of Agri-food Quality in the EU: The Role of Producer Groups”
Pablo Baquero, HEC Paris. “Contracts for Innovation in Brazil: Challenges, Practices, and Potential”
Hannibal Travis, FIU College of Law. “Copyright, Human Development, and Generative AI”
Abstracts:
Helena Alviar García
My presentation will have as its goal to compare access to land in several countries: Brasil, Colombia, Guatemala, India and South Africa. Despite their plurality, there are common features to be explored which can promote a meaningful dialogue between these jurisdictions, and in this way explore paths to follow or avenues to avoid. Shared characteristics include a transitional initial stage (from dictatorship to democracy, from colonialism to independence, from conflict to peace) paired with a transformative ethos. This combination of objectives (transition and transformation) was crystallized (with varying degrees of strength) through the establishment of liberal constitutions with the inclusion of social and economic rights and the co-existence of multiple forms of property. This presentation and future article will aim to explore two overarching observations can be made of these commonalities. First, despite their transformative, transitional ideals the cases contain a structural bias toward classical liberal ideals. Second, all of the cases seem to place too much faith in constitutional transformation and judicial interpretation and less on other aspects crucial for land access.
Lorenzo Bairati
The European Union stands out on the global stage for upholding a concept of agri-food quality that is closely linked to product authenticity and territorial connection. This cultural element is the basis of regulation concerning protected designations of origin (PDO) and protected geographical indications (PGI) whose recent reform has strengthened, among other things, the role of producer groups. This talk aims to address the latest developments in this field, with a particular focus on the following aspects: The evolution of the concept of quality as conveyed by the guidelines of PDO and PGI products; The consequences of strengthening producer groups in terms of quality protection, consumer protection and food systems governance; The prospects of the latest reforms on PDO and PGI products in terms of rural development and product sustainability.
Pablo Marcello Baquero
The existence of hybrid structures—combining the independence of contractual relationships with the hierarchy typical of organizations—has long been recognized in the legal and in the economics literature across various arrangements, including franchising, joint ventures, and other strategic alliances. A distinct subset of these structures involves contracts for innovation, where two or multiple companies collaborate to produce an output under conditions of high uncertainty. In these agreements, governance mechanisms continually specify uncertainty, while default contract law rules must deter opportunism without compelling parties to proceed with highly experimental relationships that prove unviable. Most empirical studies on the use and design of contracts for innovation stem out of the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe. However, little is known about their deployment and design in emerging economies. This paper examines the current use and potential of contracts for innovation in Brazil and explores whether modifications to contract law rules may be necessary to enable them. To investigate this, eleven interviews were conducted with a select group of companies engaged in advanced innovation in Brazil. The findings of this research are the subject of this presentation.
Jorge L. Esquirol
Alternatives to orthodox legal models are hard to sustain in a hierarchically ordered world, particularly for developing countries. Despite a potentially better fit with local conditions, political constituencies, and sustainable development, heterodox legality in developing states is mostly dismissed as backward, anti-development, and dysfunctional. This practically automatic response is assisted by “law and development” tropes about the qualitative difference between developed and developing country law. One of the elements of this discourse is the extraordinary legal informality in developing countries. The present article challenges the basis for this hierarchical distinction. It demonstrates the extensive quotients of legal informality in developed country law. And it introduces the theory of heterodox legal informality in the Global South, and Latin America particularly. Heterodox informality reveals defensible policy objectives and sustainability benefits from alternative allocations of legal informality in different sectors and to different actors. Taking examples from the law of secured transactions and real property law, the piece demonstrates the informality both pre- and post-development reforms. The difference is not really about formalizing the informal or developing the legal system: “development” reforms equally deploy informality. Rather, the changes primarily affect where informality is sanctioned and by whom it is exercised. Legal informality — properly directed – may well serve social and ecological goals, sustainable development. It needs to be harnessed and employed rather than simply dismissed as an aberrational type of law.
Domenico di Micco
Any market is the meeting of supply and demand, and prices depend on the conditions under which this meeting takes place. Within this framework, the concepts of ‘scarcity’ and ‘abundance’ then play a crucial role: when goods are scarce, prices rise; conversely, when goods are abundant, prices fall. But what do scarcity and abundance depend on? In many cases, they depend on the very nature of things (diamonds are rarer than stones). In other cases, such as the protection of geographical indications, they purely depend on “legal recognition”, which creates an artificial scarcity of goods by recognising and enhancing certain specificities – geographical, physical or cultural – regardless of their actual availability in nature. In this respect, a comparative study of some of the most important regulations on the protection of geographical indications will help us to understand both the light and the shade of such a process.
Bianca Gardella Tedeschi
Rice cultivation is at the center of Vercelli agriculture in Piemonte. And the town of Vercelli houses the Rice Stock Exchange, one major one in this field. Rice has been introduced in Piemonte already in the Middle Ages, because of the abundance of water. Slowly defined the environment and molded the landscape. Rice production increased in the XIX and XX century due to the water canalization that brought the water od different rivers to the plain. The canal system consists of a huge hydraulic infrastructure serving of agriculture, governed today even with the help of sophisticated electronics, but which for centuries had its regulator in the almost unknown figure of the “waterman,” a profound connoisseur of the paddy field, who knew how to walk the water by exploiting the imperceptible orographic gradients that mark the Piedmont plain. Characteristic of this area is the “Cascina da riso”, a microvillage that provided accommodation for the workers and the master, but was provided with grammar school, chapel and sometimes even a diner. Recently, an old variety of rice has been reintroduced, the “Riso Gigante di Vercelli”, a variety who is particularly resistant to fungi.The operation has been conducted by Slow food movement who helped rice growers to diversify the production, as answer to the global competition from Asian markets. In 2018, this variety of rice became “Presidio Slow Food Riso Gigante Vercelli”. Producers founded the Associazione Riso Gigante Vercelli Originale and adopted a “Disciplinare di produzione del riso Gigante Vercelli”.
Barbara Pozzo
Regulation (EU) 2023/2411 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 October 2023 has introduced the protection of Geographical Indications for craft and industrial products. The contribution aims at investigating how the Regulation may have implications in the fashion world. It explores under which conditions GIs can be a viable solution for the future of the apparel and footwear sector, which is more and more linked to ideas, stories, and practices at the local level. In particular, it will focus on a particular case study undertaken in Northern Italy, concerning the possibility of protecting the “Lace of Cantù” through a Geographical Indications for craft.
Hannibal Travis
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools empower ordinary people to polish their own writings, drawings, designs, and schedules – even their songs, movies, and medical treatment plans. Governments have likely spent tens of billions of dollars on the computer-science and AI basic and applied research that made these new tools possible, including the telecommunications and Internet technology that assembled the vast troves of training data on which AI is trained. Despite thousands of AI startups, access to AI tools remains uneven. Many mass-market generative AI models are tightly constrained, with politically incorrect chats, hyper-realistic images, or even forms of humor being banned. Part of the problem is a global copyright regime that is too broad, too automatic, and too inflexible. Using its international and domestic principles, publishers, writers, photographers, videographers, musicians, and songwriters may plausibly assert that text or images similar to their own in only fragmentary ways violate reproduction, adaptation, or availability rights of authors. This presentation explores copyright limitations and exceptions that will be important for the accessibility and improvement of generative AI models, and related rights of human development in domestic and international law. Properly understood, the freedom of expression, the right to access the fruits of scientific and technological development, the privacy of the home and correspondence to or from it, and even the rights to life or to health will vindicate ordinary people’s access to highly advanced AI.
Dina Waked
Egyptian cotton is globally recognized as a symbol of quality and luxury, yet its history is deeply entangled with a complex narrative of land ownership, industrialization, trade, and development. This paper traces the evolution of Egyptian cotton as a brand, examining how it emerged, endured, and adapted through periods of colonial domination, national independence, and waves of privatization. It explores the ways in which global demand, shifting labor conditions, and state policies have influenced its production and trade, shaping the livelihoods of those dependent on its cultivation. By unpacking this history, the paper reveals how imperial economic structures, global trade dynamics, and local political struggles have shaped the fate of Egyptian cotton. In doing so, it offers a broader insight into the political economy of imperialism, exploitation, and economic domination in the Global South, highlighting the persistent legacies of colonial extraction in contemporary markets.
Biographies:
Helena Alviar García
Helena Alviar is a permanent professor at Sciences Po Law School in Paris, France. SJD from Harvard Law School and lawyer from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She served as Dean of Los Andes Law School where she also held tenure as full professor (profesora titular), teaching courses on Property, Public law, legal theory and feminist theory. She has been a visiting professor in universities in Latin America, Europe and the United States including Harvard Law School, University of Pennsylvania, Università di Torino, University of Miami, Universidad de Puerto Rico and University of Wisconsin in Madison. Notably, she was the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in 2017; the Bok Distinguished Visiting Professor at Penn Law School in 2015 and the Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2008. Professor Alviar is also the co-founder of Dejusticia, one of the leading human rights NGO’s in the Global South. She is also an academic member of the Institute for Global Law and Policy-IGLP- at Harvard Law School.
Lorenzo Bairati
Lorenzo Bairati is an Associate Professor at the University of Gastronomical Sciences of Pollenzo in Italy since 2017. After obtaining his Ph.D from the University of Florence (Italy), Prof. Baiarati worked as a research fellow from 2010 to 2013 focusing on the complexity of legal sources and the multiplicity of levels of government in the European Union. His research was centered on the institutional tools needed to ensure adequate compliance with the obligations related to the participation in European dynamics within legal orders characterized by strong devolution. From 2013 to 2017, Lorenzo Bairati was a researcher at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (Italy) teaching courses on Food Law and European Union Law while also developing collaborative projects with other research institutions whose work focused on comparative law and global food law. His current research and publication projects include global food governance, international food trade law and food consumer protection from a comparative perspective..
Pablo Baquero
Pablo Marcello Baquero is Assistant Professor at HEC Paris and a Fellow at the Hi! Paris Center on Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for Science, Business and Society. Before becoming an Assistant Professor, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at HEC Paris. Previously, he was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and worked as a lawyer in France and in Brazil, dealing with commercial arbitration, contractual transactions and foreign investments. He further worked as consultant to the Doing Business Project – World Bank, Washington DC, US, and as an intern at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), Vienna, Austria. He holds a Ph.D. in Law from the University of Cambridge, a LL.M. from Harvard Law School and a LL.B. from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He teaches courses on Digital Assets and Blockchain, Tech Law, Digital Innovation Law and Contract Law.
Domenico di Micco
Domenico di Micco holds a PhD in comparative law. After having taught private law at L. Bocconi University in Milan (2019-2023), he is currently Senior Lecturer of Comparative Law at the University of Turin where his teaching responsibilities include Legal Anthropology, Comparative Legal Systems and Legal Aspects of Globalisation. His research interests include quasi-contracts and the theory of unjust enrichment, property law, global markets and regulation, law and cultural diversity, comparative methodology. Since 2016, he has been Director of ISAIDAT (Subalpine Institute for the Analysis of Transnational Activities) which has been established by Rodolfo Sacco in 1994.
Jorge L. Esquirol
Jorge L. Esquirol is a founding faculty member and the founding international programs director of the Florida International University College of Law in Miami, Florida. He previously taught at Northeastern University School of Law and before that was Academic Affairs Director for the Graduate Program at Harvard Law School. He was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law for 2015-2016 at the University of Trento; visiting Research Professor at the Watson Institute Brown University Spring 2008. ) His undergraduate degree is in Finance summa cum laude from Georgetown University (1986), with a J.D. (1989) and S.J.D. (2001) degrees from Harvard Law School. He clerked for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida (1989-90) and was an associate attorney at the Wall Street firm of Shearman & Sterling (1990-92). He is fluent in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian and the author of numerous publications on law-and-development, comparative law, property, and commercial law.
Ileana Porras
Ileana Porras is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Miami School of Law. She was Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2010 until 2017. She teaches Public International Law, Climate Change Law & Policy, and Property Law. Prior to joining the Law School Professor Porras was Visiting Professor at the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University and Director of the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (2008-2010). She has been Visiting Professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University and at Boston College Law School. She was Professor of Law at the University of Utah from 1993-2001. She has also taught at the Universidad de la Paz, San José, Costa Rica, at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki and has taught regularly at the Faculté de Droit, Université Paris V, France. Professor Porras has published widely on a variety of subjects of international law. Her present scholarship is organized around three primary themes: the function of the idea of the providential function of commerce in international law, sustainable development and the city, and religion and international law.
Barbara Pozzo
Barbara Pozzo is a Full Professor of Comparative Law since 2001 at University of Insubria, Como School of Law; Coordinator of the Master Program on Environmental Law at the University of Milan (2002–2008); Titular Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law (since 2014); Dean of the Law School of the University of Insubria (since 2015); Member of the European Law Faculties Association (since 2015); Coordinator of the PhD Program on Law and Social Sciences at the University of Insubria (since 2016); Director of the Summer School Program in Comparative Environmental Law at the University of Insubria, in association with the Universities of Utrecht, Marseille/Aix-en-Provence and Opole (since 2017); and UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Women’s Rights (since 2019). She is the author of several articles and books in Italian, French and English and member of the Editorial Board of the European Review of Private Law and of the Annuario di Diritto Comparato. Barbara Pozzo has been Visiting Professor at various foreign universities (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis (2016); Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo (2015); UC Davis School of Law, California (2012); Louisiana State University (2004); Faculté de Droit of Montpellier (1998); Fachbereich Rechtswissenschaft, University of Hamburg (1991)).
Ediberto Román
Ediberto Roman is a founding faculty member of the FIU College of Law, since 2002. He was one of the school’s first Associate Dean’s and is a prolific scholar and public commentator. From 1995 to 2002, he was an associate professor and then professor of law at St. Thomas University School of Law. Before entering academia, he specialized in securities and antitrust litigation at several Wall Street law firms. His teaching experience include constitutional law, administrative law, contracts, torts, criminal law, corporations, comparative corporate law, products liability, agency and partnerships, antitrust, immigration and citizenship studies, professional responsibility, law and accounting, race and the law, remedies, and street law. In addition to winning “professor of the year” twice, he was also the first law professor to receive an Excellence in Scholarship grant at Barry University-St. Thomas University and the first recipient of the FIU’s College of Law Hispanic Law Student Association’s Enma Tarafa Excellence Award. He has also received several FIU top university awards, including being a top scholar and the recipient of outstanding research grants. During this period, he also served as a visiting professor at American University College of Law, the University of Miami, and St. Thomas University.
Hannibal Travis
Hannibal Travis is a full professor at the FIU College of Law. He teaches and conducts research in the fields of cyberlaw, intellectual property, antitrust, international and comparative law, and human rights. He joined FIU after several years practicing intellectual property and Internet law at O’Melveny & Myers in San Francisco, California, and at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. He has also served as the Irving Cypen Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Florida, a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Villanova University, and a Visiting Fellow at Oxford. He graduated summa cum laude in philosophy from Washington University, where he was named to Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served as a teaching assistant in philosophy classes taught at Harvard College and UC Berkeley. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Wm. Matthew Byre, Jr. at the United States District Court in Los Angeles, California. Professor Travis has also published widely on genocide, cultural survival, and human rights.
Dina Waked
Dina Waked is a permanent professor at Sciences Po Law School in Paris, France. She holds an S.J.D. (Doctor of Judicial Science) and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, an LL.B. from Cairo University Law School, and a BA in Economics from the American University in Cairo. Her doctoral thesis received the Harvard Law School 2012 John M. Olin Law & Economics Prize. Before joining the Law School at Sciences Po in 2013, she was teaching at the college of Sciences Po in Paris and Menton, SKEMA Business School – ESC Lille and the American University in Cairo. She teaches courses on Global Antitrust Law, Comparative Competition Law and Economic Development, Law and Economics, Regulation, International Business Law, and Law in the Middle East. She has advised a number of governments and international organizations on competition law compliance and the assessment of competition law reforms.