There are a variety of ways one can measure the growing importance of international law scholarship. One metric that I have never seen discussed is simple: how often has the term “international law” been used in academic scholarship? Using Westlaw’s JLR library I calculated how often “international law” was referenced from 1987 to 2011. The results...
My initial impression of the Kiobel oral argument is that the Supreme Court is going to do its best to do an historical analysis of the ATS and use that history to find ways to limit its scope. It could do so by holding that the ATS does not apply extraterritorially, or that it does not apply unless there is...
James Phillips and John Yoo have just published a thoughtful analysis critiquing Brian Leiter's approach to ranking faculty relevance. They suggest that what we should be looking at is all-stars, not superstars. If you measure a school based on their all-star line-up rather than their superstars, the results are dramatically different. Here's how they put it: Faculty can...
Having followed the terrorism litigation against Iran for years, I was fascinated to read of the recent legislation—Section 502 of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights--that creates a legislative fix for victims of one particular group of terrorist victims but not thousands of others. The law in question grants plaintiffs/judgment creditors in one and only one case—Peterson...
As part of my research on international corruption in a forthcoming article in the Ohio State Law Journal, I came across some interesting studies on the relationship between corruption and democracies. One would think that democratic regimes are less corrupt than autocratic regimes because in democracies public officials are subject to political accountability. But the evidence suggests otherwise....
Since the late 1990s, thirty-nine nations have signed the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. So far so good. But unfortunately, the treaty essentially is toothless, requiring nations to implement national laws that prohibit foreign bribery, but doing little more. Only a handful of countries are effectively enforcing their anti-bribery laws. Which ones? Well, the answer seems to...
I have just published an article in the Utah Law Review that I wanted to flag for our readers. The focus is on the WTO security exception, one of the least appreciated aspects of WTO law. Given that the security exception is self-judging, it is curious that Member States rarely abuse the privilege by invoking it in bad...
Fred Shapiro and Michelle Pearse have just published in the Michigan Law Review "The Most-Cited Law Review Articles of All Time." It is a fascinating read, and includes some choice nuggets about international law scholarship. Among the more interesting findings is that of the recent era (1990-2009) only three international law scholars were among the most-cited: Curtis Bradley,...
The shoe has finally dropped. Ever since the Invictus Memo was released to the public we knew that the Ecuadorian Plaintiffs were considering twenty-seven different countries to enforce the $18.2 Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron. With Chevron's far-flung assets, it was plausible that the Plaintiffs would choose to enforce the judgment in countries with close ties to Ecuador and...
On past Memorial Day weekend celebrations I have posted various speeches and photos in memory of our fallen heroes. For this Memorial Day weekend, I thought I would offer you a different perspective and present one of the best anti-war poems ever written. The poem "The Battle of Blenheim" by Robert Southey was assigned in my younger son's...
Like thousands of other high school kids, today is AP Comparative Government exam day in the Alford household. According to the AP College Board, "The course aims to illustrate the rich diversity of political life, to show available institutional alternatives, to explain differences in processes and policy outcomes, and to communicate to students the importance of global political and economic changes." But in order to move the discussion from the abstract to the concrete, AP Comp. Gov. students are required to study six--and only six--representative countries. Can you guess the six countries chosen as suitable for comparison? And could you answer the short- or long-essay questions these high school whiz kids are required to answer? Details after the jump:
When is an arbitral panel an international tribunal for purposes of Section 1782? Section 1782, of course, is the statute that authorizes federal courts to order discovery in aid of proceedings before foreign courts and international tribunals. As discussed in a forthcoming article in the Virginia Journal of International Law entitled, Ancillary Discovery to Prove Denial of Justice,...