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...
The D.C. Circuit held this week that torture by non-state actors was not actionable under the Alien Tort Statute. The case, Ali Shafi v. Palestinian Authority, arose from the alleged torture in the West Bank by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO of a Palestinian national who was an Israeli spy. The Shafis argue that “the [Palestinian Authority's] conduct...
As a general matter, we agree with Professor Weber’s comments, especially in relation to development and climate change. While we have not in this article focused on developmental aspects of the global financial architecture, in fact, we both view this as the fundamental goal.[1] Development however is not a simple objective and no single set of solutions to the development...
[Rolf H Weber is a Professor for Civil, Commercial and European Law at the University of Zurich Law School and a visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong] The contribution of Professor Douglas W Arner and Professor Ross P Buckley is an important piece to the lively debate about the (new) architecture of the global financial system. The exposé is...
[Douglas P Arner is Director of the Asian Institute of International Financial Law, Director of the Duke–HKU Asia–America Institute in Transnational Law and a Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong. Ross P Buckley is a Professor of International Finance Law at the University of New South Wales and a Fellow of the Asian Institute of International Financial...
So, you're a climate scientist. You're tired of the lies and misinformation about climate change peddled by know-nothing pundits on the radical right. (We're looking at you, George Will.) What do you do? You rap about it, of course. Well done, Aussies. More info at The Guardian here....
His name? John Ashcroft. Yep, that John Ashcroft: The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former U.S. attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater. Ashcroft will...
Honestly, he does. The email doesn't lie: Attention, Beneficiary Due to the petitions received by the UN, I Secretary-General Ban ki-moon from all over the continent in regards to the fraudulent activities going on in the West Africa sub-region with security's agent and diplomats who has been delaying people's funds, consignment and valuables in their custody and demand outrageous fees to get...
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...
