There are many reasons to demand closing Guantanamo Bay and ending the military commissions, such as the government's tendency to invent armed conflicts in order to convict defendants of imaginary war crimes. But even if you don't care about the integrity of international humanitarian law or the coherence of the American approach to that body of law, you should still...
Here is a story that no one (here in the U.S. anyway) is paying attention to: Russia’s accession to the WTO cleared a major hurdle when the WTO Working Party on its accession approved, ad referendum on 10 November 2011, the package spelling out Russia’s terms of entry to the organization. The Working Party will now send its accession recommendation to...
[Rishi Gulati lectures on Public International Law at the University of New South Wales in Australia.] At 9.24am on 12 October 2011, surrounded by chants of “democracy is dead”, a suite of 19 bills (the Clean Energy Bills or the Carbon Tax Bills) were passed in the Lower House of the Australian Parliament. It must be borne in mind that those 19 bills won’t...
Trade treaties with South Korea, Columbia, and Panama are finally advancing, with President Obama set to send the three deals to Congress for approval this week, reports the WSJ this morning. The agreements had been tied up in acrimonious domestic politics for some five years, but it appears that bipartisan desire to improve the US export picture has moved things...
Check out the following ad for the new Audi A6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeuveTXuNho&feature=relmfu You know you're in trouble when a German company is using the decaying state of America's infrastructure to sell cars. Then again, when you think about it, the ad is actually kind of a Republican utopia: austerity and expensive, environment-destroying luxury goods all in one. Why fix the roads when your...
Kate Sheppard has an interesting post at Mother Jones today discussing a series of WikiLeaks cables that detail Chevron's attempts to convince the Ecuadorian government to end the lawsuit against it. Here are the two key cables she discusses: This from a March 2006 cable written by US officials in Quito: "In previous meetings, Chevron reps have suggested that the ...
Following Talisman Energy, the Fourth Circuit has now held in Aziz v. Alcolac, another ATS case, that the mens rea of aiding and abetting under the "law of nations" is intent, not knowledge. That's plainly wrong, as I have pointed out before, so there is no point dwelling on the new decision. But this paragraph deserves specific mention, because it...
Fantastic news: New York – A federal appeals court vacated an order Monday by a New York judge that barred an $18 billion judgment in Ecuador against Chevron Inc. for contaminating the Amazon. The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had previously expressed skepticism that a New York judge could wield jurisdiction outside...
The Globe & Mail has a blockbuster report today concerning China's willingness to supply weapons to Gaddafi's regime during the rebellion: China offered huge stockpiles of weapons to Colonel Moammar Gadhafi during the final months of his regime, according to papers that describe secret talks about shipments via Algeria and South Africa. Documents obtained by The Globe and Mail...
David Bosco has an essay at Foreign Policy arguing that the current financial and security crises, rather than weakening international intitutions, are strengthening them. In short, there are so few options, that leaders are turning to international organizations and relying on them. But there may also be a more fundamental shift that is occurring in international economic policymaking: ...
U.S. opponents of UNCLOS, whom I think have a number of quite sensible points, do need to explain how the U.S. is going to operate effectively in a world where all other major seafaring nations belong to the UNCLOS system. And they have offered decent arguments. Customary international law already guarantees navigational rights. Bilateral treaties, or even unilateral declarations, can...
Last week Julian Ku and I had the pleasure of working with Business Roundtable and a wonderful group of international law scholars--Rudolf Dolzer, Burkhard Hess, Herbert Kronke, Davis Robinson, Christoph Schreuer, and Janet Walker--on a Second Circuit amicus brief addressing the propriety of antisuit injunctions under international law. The amicus brief addresses an appeal of Judge Kaplan of the...
