Florida's legislature has just passed a bill that is an interesting variation on the wave of other foreign law bans that have been enacted in U.S. states. Florida's new law would ban the use of foreign law in Florida state courts if that law "contravenes the strong public policy" of Florida or if the "law is unjust or unreasonable." It...
This lawsuit is mostly just grandstanding by a very small nation with the help of a savvy (but sloppy) US law firm. But there is one possibly meaningful outcome. It could result in an ICJ proceeding involving the United Kingdom. The tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands is taking on the United States and the world's eight other nuclear-armed nations with an...
So maybe the use of the Alien Tort Statute against corporations for overseas activities isn't fully dead. Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has revived In re South Africa Apartheid Litigation, a twelve-year-old litigation that just won't die. A copy of the opinion can be found here. Most of the opinion deals with whether a corporation may be...
I think it is fair to say that when Kevin and I agree on a legal question, there is a good chance there is a lunar eclipse happening or some other rare astronomical phenomenon occurring somewhere. But since both of us think that the U.S. has no international legal basis to deny a visa to Iran's new UN ambassador, this "fair...
According to Reuters, the U.S. is thinking hard about denying a visa to Iran's new U.N. Ambassador, thus preventing him from taking up his post in New York. The new ambassador, Hamid Abutalebi, apparently participated in the Iranian takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran back in 1979. Although nothing is official yet, it looks like the U.S. is going...
Back in 2007, Messrs David Rivkin and Lee Casey's Wall Street Journal op-ed helped popularize the term "lawfare" among U.S. conservatives, who have used the term to decry legal tactics that challenged US policy in the war on terrorism. As they defined it then: The term "lawfare" describes the growing use of international law claims, usually factually or legally meritless, as a tool...
China has not been quiet in reacting to the Philippines filing Sunday of its memorial in the UNCLOS South China Sea arbitration. In addition to the foreign ministry's remarks, the People's Daily has released a full-scale defense of China's legal and policy position (recently translated here). It is the longest official (well, close-to-official) statement of China's legal position on the...
Here is the ICJ's decision in "Whaling in the Antarctic" (Australia v. Japan, New Zealand intervening). Here is the Registry's summary. The vote was unanimous on jurisdiction, and then 12-4 on the rest in Australia's favor with judges Owada, Abraham, Bennouna, Yusuf dissenting. There was one aspect of the decision that went in favor of Japan (13-3) but that aspect of...
Just in time for the odd Sunday filing deadline, the government of the Philippines announced that it had submitted its memorial in its arbitration with China under UNCLOS. Ignoring a possible backlash from China, the Philippine government transmitted the document, called a “memorial” in international arbitration parlance, on Sunday to the Netherlands-based Permanent Court of Arbitration where a five-member tribunal operating...
On Monday, the International Court of Justice will announce its long-awaited judgment in Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v. Japan). The judgment (scheduled for 10 a.m. Hague time) comes almost four years after Australia first filed its application way back in May 2010 (here is one of many prior posts where I complained about the length of time this judgment has...
Just in time for Michelle Obama's speech in Beijing extolling the benefits of free speech and a President Obama/President Xi summit, the NY Times published an article detailing how the U.S National Security Agency infiltrated the systems of Chinese telecom infrastructure giant Huawei. According to documents the Times obtained from the Edward Snowden leak, the NSA "obtained information about the...
I was fortunate to participate in a discussion held at a hearing of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board today in Washington D.C. I say "participate in a discussion" because it was not like giving testimony to a congressional hearing where the congressman make speeches and ask questions unrelated to your testimony. Rather, it was closer to a mini-oral...
