This story from The Guardian is a wonderful development: A California free speech group whose board of directors includes Google and Yahoo said on Monday it had asked U.S. trade officials to challenge China's Internet restrictions as a violation of global trade rules. The issue threatens to further strain U.S.-China trade relations if the U.S. Trade Representative's office decides to take...
I read with interest the Mitchell Report on the illegal use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances. The section that particularly grabbed my attention was the governing law (pp. 18-24). Of central importance to the report is how one defines the "illegal" use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances. Here are a few key sections...
That essentially was the question raised in the recent Ninth Circuit case of Humanitarian Law Project v. Mukasey. The answer to the question is no. The Plaintiffs were hoping to train members of one terrorist group, PKK, by helping them (1) to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes; (2) to engage in political advocacy on...
Today Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. You can read the Nobel Committee's presentation speech here, Al Gore's Nobel Lecture here, and the IPCC's Nobel Lecture here. A few quick thoughts on the award. First, scientists have become increasingly common recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. ...
Now this story from the New York Times Magazine is what I call an innovative idea for lawmaking: When the New Zealand police force said they were open to suggestions about how to rewrite national policing laws, they meant it. In September, they posted the 1958 Police Act online and invited Kiwis and non-Kiwis alike to visit the site and type...
Doris Lessing received the Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday. Her Nobel Lecture is a joy to read. It's so easy to take for granted how much books enrich our lives. Lessing helps us imagine a world without them, a world that is a reality for many in Africa today. Here is a taste: Not long ago I...
In reading the transcript of the oral argument in Boumediene today, I spent some time looking for clues about Justice Kennedy. If you look at the transcript, he asked only a handful of questions and almost all focused on the D.C. Circuit’s review as an adequate substitute for habeas. Other than one joke (p. 30) and one question...
This past week's Annapolis Agreement has been received with lukewarm enthusiasm by the press. Commenters have described the agreement as simply a procedural document. I'm not so sure that such a tepid response is warranted. For the moment, remove the general pessimism about the possibility of Middle East peace. Ignore spillover effects from the Bush Administration's foreign policy...
These are the facts in a recent parental child abduction case applying the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction: • Parents and two twins live in Texas for over 12 months (5/97 to 6/98) • Parents and twins travel the U.S. for over 6 months (6/98 to 12/98) • Entire family moves to France and live there for 7 months (12/98 to...
SCOTUSblog has the details on the pending cert. petition to be filed by corporate defendants in the South African apartheid case of Khulumani v. Barclay Bank. It is worth a read. ...
The WTO Appellate Body has four new members: Ms Lilia R. Bautista of the Philippines and Ms Jennifer Hillman of the United States for four years commencing on 11 December 2007; and Mr Shotaro Oshima of Japan and Ms Yuejiao Zhang of China for four years commencing on 1 June 2008. The most interesting part of the appointment process was...
The New Yorker has an interesting article on how the Internet is changing the way we think about buying and selling information. The article argues that: We have clearly reached a new point in the history of text production. On many fronts, traditional periodicals and books are making way for blogs and other electronic formats. But magazines and books still...
