In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Peter Spiro

12 May

As my correspondent Victoria Ferauge points out in response to last week's post on inter-governmental agreements implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the problem with FATCA for expatriate Americans is not so much the prospect of added accountant fees in tax preparation. It's the prospect of being discriminated against as an American for all things financial. Faced with their own accounting...

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08 May

A constitutional challenge is in the works to Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the anti-offshoring tax measure that is the bane of ordinary US citizens worldwide. The law adds a burdensome layer of administrative requirements to longstanding citizenship-based tax liabilities. If you're an American living in France, say hello to thousands of Euros in accountant fees. Foreign banks are a key location...

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01 May

Before the Piketty bubble reaches stage six (at this rate, sometime later today), a few thoughts on the geosocial implications of his theory of inequality. That theory has been getting the lion's share of the lion-sized attention showered on Capital in the 21st Century (Kindle edition available only). Those of you reading the reviews (if not the book itself) will know...

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21 Apr

NY Times dispatch here. The Supreme Court will now confront the question of whether Congress can force the Secretary of State to include the birthplace "Jerusalem, Israel" at a U.S. citizen's option. This could be a huge case or a not-so-huge case. If the Court affirms the D.C. Circuit's ruling below and strikes down legislation purporting to constrain the Secretary of...

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07 Mar

Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev yesterday announced a legislative initiative to fast-track citizenship for non-resident native Russian speakers. He didn't single out ethnic Russians in Ukraine, but the context says it all. The citizenship shift (variations of which have been floated since the Maidan erupted last month) would allow Russia to amplify its protective justification for the action in Crimea....

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06 Mar

President Obama issued an executive order this morning imposing entry bans on those responsible for actions that "undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine," "threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine," or involve "misappropriation of state assets of Ukraine or of an economically significant entity in Ukraine." Sec. 2. I hereby find that the unrestricted immigrant and nonimmigrant...

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02 Mar

Eric Posner on international law and Ukraine ("exhaustively", in his own description): The international law commentariat has been pretty quiet about the most important geopolitical event so far this year. Hello? Anyone want to offer an opinion? Let me fill in the silence: 1. Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine violates international law. 2. No one is going to do anything about it. International law...

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07 Feb

I have a piece up on Slate arguing that the Olympics should no longer require competitors to have the nationality of the country for which they compete. A journalist friend of mine once told me, "Don't ever read the comments. Just don't." Misguidedly thinking that Slate readers were somehow exempt from the laws of the internet, I made that mistake. Maybe 10 to 1...

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17 Jan

From the third paragraph of President Obama's implementation of surveillance reforms (Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-28). [O]ur signals intelligence activities must take into account that all persons should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their nationality or wherever they might reside, and that all persons have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information. The primary operative provision of the...

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26 Dec

Citizenship practice and policy is mostly below the news radar; change is slow; and the field tends not to be reported in any sort of integrated way. So here are the key threads from 2013 and how they might spin out in 2014. 1. Citizenship is not priceless.  A growing number of states are selling citizenship. Malta is the latest. EU...

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