The U.S. and South Korean announced yesterday that they have reached a bilateral free trade agreement - the first of its kind between the U.S. and a major Asian economy. Indeed, in terms of trade volume, "KORUS - FTA" immediately becomes the second most important trade agreement for the U.S. after NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). The text...
Opinio Juris has invited scholars who are experts in international environmental law to give their thoughts in the coming days on the Supreme Court's "global warming" decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. I am not an expert on either standing or environmental law, but I do know a fair bit about administrative law. In that vein, I wanted to...
Last week, I blogged about my primary frustration with SSRN: the long delay that occurs between uploading a revision to an essay and it replacing the old one. Gregg Gordon, the President and CEO of SSRN, graciously replied to my post — and then to my follow-up questions. Gregg has given me permission to reproduce our exchange, so...
When I decided to leave the University of Georgia for the University of Auckland, I worried that my American colleagues would think I was crazy to abandon a tenure-track job at an excellent law school to join a law faculty in a country best known for sheep and Lord of the Rings (and the Nuclear Tests Case, to nerdy lawyers),...
Less than six months after the Softwood Lumber Agreement was signed, the United States has invoked the dispute resolution provisions of the SLA to request formal consultations as a prelude to the filing of an arbitration claim. According to USTR, the dispute concerns application of the "surge" mechanism that is triggered when lumber prices fall below a certain threshold....
Word had it that Jose Alvarez would be not be offering up a conventional presidential address on Friday at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, and it lived up to the billing (good thing for the advance chatter; the general business session is usually skipable, unless you're winning an award, although I hear things were also...
The Australian has the complete text. Here are some of the juciest tidbits, with comments:b. I agree that I will not communicate with the media in any way regarding the illegal conduct alleged in the charge and the specifications or about the circumstances surrounding my capture and detention as an unlawful enemy combatant for a period of one (1)...
There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of the annual law school rankings published by US News & World Report. Law deans have long argued that the rankings are “arbitrary,” “inherently flawed,” and “unworthy of being an important influence on the choice” of law schools. But a law student in Washington D.C. has recently uncovered evidence indicating that it...
Just in case some of our readers missed our panel at the American Society of International Law Meeting yesterday on customary international law, I would recommend you check out a very impressive and interesting exchange in the new online version of the Virginia Law Review - In Brief. The lead piece is by Judge William Fletcher of the U.S. Court...
How happy is David Hicks today?A U.S. military tribunal sentenced Australian David Hicks Friday to seven years in prison but he will only have to serve nine months of the sentence. Hicks, who became the first war crimes convict among the hundreds of foreign captives held for years at the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba, pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism in...
The UN Human Rights Council today concluded another session in which it failed to address the vast majority of human rights abuses occurring around the globe. It ignored such serious situations as repression in Burma and North Korea, denial of political rights in China, restrictions on women's rights in Saudi Arabia, and even the violent crackdown on opposition leaders in...
[Joost Pauwelyn is Professor of Law at Duke Law School and a discussant in the Opinio Juris On-line Symposium. He blogs regularly at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog] “Noncompliance is necessary to the effective functioning and the continued relevance of the international legal system”. That is Jacob Cogan’s main thesis. Applied to the United States – for...
