There’s never a boring year in international law and 2013 turned out to be particularly eventful: Syria, major cases in front of national and international courts, a possible nuclear deal with Iran, and turmoil in Eastern Europe, Egypt, and South Sudan, to name but a few reasons. This post is not an attempt to log all that we have written about...
I had the pleasure of participating in a very interesting discussion yesterday of Argentina's debt litigation at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. Richard Samp offered a useful overview of this litigation, and my own talk focused on the strange (and in my view inappropriate) way that the U.S. legal system allows sovereigns to waive immunity from courts, but continues to...
I've been following Argentina's travails in the U.S. courts with great interest, even penning an oped on the subject back in January on their standoff with sovereign debt creditors in Ghana. Argentina and the so-called "holdout" creditors have been battling out their dispute in the federal courts of New York for years. So it is interesting to note that Argentina...
In other Latin American news, Venezuela's withdrawal from the American Convention of Human Rights went into effect this week, drawing the condemnations of various human rights groups. The withdrawal was one of the Hugo Chavez's last decisions as President, however, and seems to have been sparked by dissatisfaction with decisions by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Venezuela's withdrawal from the...
I'm a little late to this, but it is worth noting that President Santos of Colombia has announced that Colombia will "not abide" by an ICJ ruling awarding certain territorial and maritime rights to Nicaragua. Colombia is not exactly going to simply ignore the ICJ ruling, its Foreign Minister says, but it sure sounds like it is going to do exactly...
I have been in Santiago, Chile for the past few days keynoting an international law conference at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. It's an impressive law school in one of the most beautiful cities in South America. I was fortunate to arrive on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the defining moment in Chilean history: Augusto Pinochet's...
Although the government of Colombia was far from pleased when the ICJ issued a judgment last November in a long-running territorial dispute with Nicaragua, it did not go so far as to say it would simply ignore the ruling. But Colombia's vice president Angelino Garzon seems to be hinting in recent comments that Colombia is prepared to do just that. “The...
ABC's Univision reports on this op-ed by former Colombian foreign secretary and former vice justice minister, which seems to accuse shadowy Chinese business interests of influencing the recent ICJ decision in Nicaragua v. Colombia. Here is the crux of the alleged wrongdoing (or at least shady conduct): ...
An Ontario court in Yaiguaje v. Chevron has dismissed the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' efforts to enforce the Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron Canada. Essentially the dismissal rests on the doctrine of the separate legal identities of parent and subsidiary corporations. Chevron has no assets in Canada, and the subsidiaries' assets there cannot be attached to enforce a judgment against the parent...
This report out of Prensa Latina in Havana suggests that the ICJ has expressed some sort of positive opinion on quality of Bolivia's case against Chile. In a press conference, [Bolivian Foreign Minister] Choquehuanca announced the International Court notified Chile on the start of the process and reasserted the Bolivian will of not affecting the bilateral relations with Chile. He also said the...
Last week, the government of Bolivia filed an application in the International Court of Justice against Chile arguing that Chile has breached its "obligation to negotiate in good faith and effectively with Bolivia in order to reach an agreement granting Bolivia a fully sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean." Is it just me, or is this the weakest case ever filed at the...
Neither the arbitral tribunal's order demanding Ecuador act to stop enforcement of the $18 Billion judgment against Chevron, nor Ecuador's continued brazen refusal to follow the order is really much a surprise. The Chevron-Ecuador Death Cage Match continues unabated and has gotten so out of control that almost nothing shocks me about this case anymore. A former Ecuadorian judge swearing...
