I am participating this week in a discussion on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the case on corporate liability under the Alien Tort Statute that will be argued tomorrow at the Supreme Court, at the Manhattan Institute's Point of Law Blog. My interlocutor will be Professor David Weissbrodt of the University of Minnesota. Here is a snippet of my opening...
It won't save his job, for reasons Julian mentioned a week or so ago, but it's still good news: Spain's top court acquitted renowned judge Baltasar Garzon on Monday of abuse of power by trying to investigate Franco-era atrocities, in a case that exposed deep wounds dating back to the civil war. Six members of the seven-strong Supreme Court...
In case you missed it, Rick Santorum asserted earlier this month that it's open season on old people in the Netherlands - that euthanasia accounts for 10% of all deaths and that the elderly walk around with "Do Not Euthanize" bracelets in the way of medical alerts. Nothing new on the home front: it's long been red meat for Republicans to...
Our thanks to everyone who has participated in this symposium—John Bellinger, David Sloss, Chimene Keitner, and Steve Vladeck—as well as to Matt Christiansen, who has coordinated the symposium for YJIL. It’s been such a pleasure to see the thoughtful and varied reactions to our Article. Here we take the opportunity to offer a few brief words in response...
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...
