All is proceeding as my colleague Anna Gelpern has foreseen. Indeed. Years ago, she mentioned to me in passing that the markets seemed remarkably unaware, or anyway remarkably sanguine, about the question of whether local law (e.g., Greek law) or foreign law (e.g., English law) governed as the choice-of-law clause for the vast tonnage of European sovereign debt. Today, we find...
The blog is run (so far, solely) by Sonia Cardenas, the Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Here is her description of the blog: This site explores universal jurisdiction, through the prism of politics and human rights. Universal jurisdiction is the revolutionary idea that...
Over at Lawfare last Friday, Bobby Chesney commented on a NY Times article reporting that military commission charges have been initiated against Ali Musa Daqduq. Chesney describes Daqduq as “a Hezbollah member involved in an attack on American forces in Iraq in which the attackers disguised themselves as American soldiers and Iraqi police and in which several captured American...
I don't see how this is going to go as planned: More than 160 German financial services executives are willing to come to Greece in order to strengthen the Greek tax mechanism, according to a report to be published in the German magazine 'Wirtschafts Woche' ...
Reuters reports that Denmark-based Lego will soon be powered solely by the wind: The family firm that controls Denmark's Lego is buying almost a third of a German offshore wind power project in an unusual foray outside the toy business to showcase its green credentials to customers. Lego's parent company, Kirkbi A/S, will invest 3 billion crowns ($534...
At Wednesday's debate, Mitt Romney claimed that one of the reasons Iran supports the Syrian government is that Syria is Iran's "route to the sea." Hmm: Where's Syria? Oh, yeah, it's off to the left -- past Iraq. And what's that funny blue thing to the south of Iran? Could it be...
Just two days ago, in his dissent in Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, Chief Justice Roberts argued that Medicaid beneficiaries should not be able to pursue injunctive relief under the Supremacy Clause against California state officials alleged to have violated the substantive provisions of the federal Medicaid statute, given that the federal law neither (1) provides a...
Hathaway, McElroy, and Solow offer an overview of attempts to enforce treaties directly in U.S. courts, as well as a typology of underappreciated modes of treaty enforcement, which they label indirect, defensive, and interpretive. In so doing, they enable us to better appreciate the ways in which courts engage with treaties, while at the same time reminding us that “the...
It is a privilege to comment on the excellent article by Professor Hathaway and her co-authors entitled “International Law at Home: Enforcing Treaties in U.S. Courts” (“IL at Home”). The article makes several important contributions to the growing body of scholarship on the domestic application of treaties in US courts and I agree with many of the authors’ central claims....
As a member of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on International Law, both while I was Legal Adviser and under Harold Koh, Oona Hathaway has made very useful contributions to the work of the Legal Adviser’s office, especially on treaty issues. “International Law at Home,” which Oona has written together with her colleagues Sabria McElroy and Sara Aronchick...
The Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street" column yesterday made an interesting comparison between sovereign bonds and corporate bonds. It pointed out that although in ordinary times, developed country sovereign debt is typically considered safer than corporate bonds of the same jurisdiction - the risk free rate of return, and the sovereign power to be able to tax, etc....
Yesterday the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, has unanimously embraced the doctrine of foreign affairs field preemption. It will surely prove to be a controversial blockbuster case for foreign affairs law, with or without Supreme Court review. The case of Movsesian v. Munich Re addressed a California statute, section 354.4, that authorized California courts to entertain various insurance claims brought...
