On behalf of all of us at Opinio Juris, I am delighted to announce that John Louth of Oxford University Press will be blogging with us this week. John joined OUP in 1997 and is now Editor-in-Chief of Academic Law, covering books, journals, and online services. He graduated from Cambridge with an undergraduate degree in law and philosophy and with...
If passed, the House bill, "Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act" (H.R. 2378) has all the markings of a major trade battle before the WTO. At bottom, the law requires the United States administrative agencies to treat currency manipulation as a subsidy that would be subject to countervailing duties equal to the benefit to exporters conferred by the manipulation. The...
A while back I wrote a sort post on the violent political economy of rare earth elements, also known as REE's. A recent Congressional Research Service report (.pdf is here) describes the central (and until recently under-reported) role of REE's in the modern economy and national security infrastructure: Some of the major end uses for rare earth elements include use in automotive...
The IISD’s paper on transparency I mentioned this morning demonstrates why the investment regime is globalization’s Rorschach test. Recent scholarship (most prominently the work of one of the participants at Barcelona, York University Professor Gus Van Harten (see, e.g., “A Case for an International Investment Court,” available here) contends that investor-state arbitration is nothing like the commercial arbitration between private...
The opportunity to guest blog on Opinio Juris is most appreciated. It is almost like having the ASIL Presidency forum all over again. My first topic emerges from a conference hosted by the Canadian-based Institute for Sustainable Development in Barcelona in July 2010. The Institute invited a number of practitioners and scholars to address the topics of transparency and independence in...
The U.S. Congress is just about to have their much-dreaded midterm elections, and they will probably not do much before November 2 except to spend millions of dollars on annoying campaign ads. But it looks like before they break for the election, Congress may vote on two bills that may violate U.S. obligations under the WTO and NAFTA. First, Congress is...
The following is a guest post from Chimene Keitner, Associate Professor of Law at Hastings. My thanks to her for contributing it! The Second Circuit’s recent panel opinion in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum has justifiably spurred much talk in the blogosphere, including posts by Trey Childress, Ken Anderson, Julian Ku, and Kevin Jon Heller. Here are my preliminary thoughts. First, it...
It's always dangerous to opine on a judgment you have only skimmed, so I'll phrase my thought as a question instead. Here is what the ATS Statute says: The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the...
There are some interesting comments in the live blog of the UNCTAD International Investment Agreements Conference from the likes of Todd Weiler, Susan Franck, and Jason Yackee. (You can also watch the proceedings here). Much substance in the coverage, but also some fun. Here's a taste: Todd Weiler: As I see Prof Franck is performing the live blog function,...
Via BLDGBLOG and Pruned (1, 2), here are two suggestions that are not so much literal proposals but rather thought experiments, each meant to prod the viewer. (And a third one from me.) The first is one of the winners of SeaChange 2030+, an "ideas competition" sponsored by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects with the goal of addressing the effects of...
Brad Roth has sent along a link to this New York Times editorial, which begins: If a country sinks beneath the sea, is it still a country? That is a question about which the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a Micronesian nation of 29 low-lying coral atolls — is now seeking expert legal advice. It is also a question the...
I wanted to flag for interested readers an upcoming event at the British Institute of International & Comparative Law (BIICL). On September 10, BIICL will host its Fifteenth Investment Treaty Forum, with a focus on recent developments in international arbitration procedure. Topics will include disclosure of evidence, state privilege, transparency of hearings, and whether or not investment arbitration is (or should be) different from...
