Toby Landau, one of the leading arbitrators in the world, gave the keynote address at the recent ITA Workshop in Dallas and, as always, he was entertaining and provocative. One of the central themes of his discussion was how arbitration counsel fail to present a case in a manner sensitive to the needs of the arbitration panel. “Inequality...
So I leave the country and the blogosphere for a few months, and what happens? (Well, beside that "war" in Libya), circuit courts have gone all negative on my argument against corporate liability under the Alien Tort Statute. In addition to the D.C. Circuit's recent decision, the Seventh Circuit (speaking through Judge Posner) went out of its way to reject...
Those who have followed the cases relating to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) here in the United States and at the ICJ know that the United States has a compliance problem. The United States does not provide the 'judicial review and reconsideration' remedy that the ICJ has indicated is required in the event a violation of an...
Assume that a U.S. agency modifies its interpretation of a federal statute to respond to an adverse WTO decision. In so doing, consistent with the Charming Betsy doctrine, its interpretation is brought into conformity with WTO jurisprudence with respect to one stage--the investigation stage--of the administrative proceeding. But the agency does not alter its interpretation of the federal...
Today an Ecuador court fined Chevron $8.6 billion for environmental damage. According to the Wall Street Journal, $5.4 billion of that is to restore polluted soil, $1.4 billion to create a health system for the community, $800 million to treat individuals injured by the pollution, $600 million to restore polluted waters, $200 million to restore native species, $150 million...
I received this notice from my friend Gary Born and thought it worth sharing. Sounds like a wonderful opportunity for any academic interested in international arbitration. My Pepperdine colleague Tom Stipanowich was the resident scholar last semester, and he could not say enough about the experience. Here's the formal announcement: The International Arbitration Group at Wilmer Cutler Pickering...
I don't quite mean that, of course. The total number of "international" law faculty depends on so many different things at any given law school. What I do mean is to follow on Kevin's post and ask, supposing you are trying to rationally plan out an international law faculty and curriculum, or more practically gradually shape into the future according...
In the past twenty years the world of investment arbitration has taken the commercial world by storm. There are over 2,750 bilateral investment treaties and almost every one of them has an arbitration provision. Investment arbitration is now a prominent feature of the arbitration landscape. Just as BITs have proliferated in recent years, so too have free...
Between Jose's guest blogging and book discussion we are about to start on Amos Guiora's book on religious freedom I want to sandwich a short notice about my recent favorite topic: no-holds-barred full contact chess arbitration. Backstory: here for the arbitration, here for the Russian regional politics and space aliens,and here for how it relates to the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. I...
I have received a significant amount of feedback on my previous post on apportioning responsibility for international violations and therefore I wanted to do a couple of follow up posts on the subject. As Judge Simma indicated in his Separate Opinion in the Oil Platforms case, there arguably is a general principle of international law that joint tortfeasors are...
Next week the ICJ will have oral proceedings in the case Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation). The .pdf of the press release is here. As far as I can tell, unlike in the Kosovo proceedings, there will not be an internet simulcast. (The Kosovo simulcast was very...
As you may remember from my previous post on this topic, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the President of the autonomous republic of Kalmikia the President of FIDE (the world chess federation), has been named in a suit before the Court of Arbitration for Sport seeking the disqualification of his FIDE candidacy. While that case is still set to be argued next week, he has announced...
