Last month the Second Circuit issued a remarkable ruling that threatens to upend the longstanding rule of successor state liability for the credit obligations of predecessor states. It did so by ruling that the automatic assumption of liability of sovereign debt of the predecessor state under international law is not a “commercial activity” within the meaning of the FSIA....
As discussed here, one of the key arguments that the Ecuador plaintiffs are making in response to Chevron’s Motion is that the damaging quotes are being taken out of context. Without question one of the most damning excerpts is when lead plaintiffs’ lawyer Steve Donziger is quoted as saying that “Because at the end of the day, this is...
The ongoing saga regarding Chevron’s legal travails in Ecuador took an interesting twist this week. As I reported earlier, Chevron has secured key outtakes of the movie Crude that appeared to show alarming collusion between the plaintiff lawyers and the Court-appointed expert. According to pleadings filed yesterday pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1782, the outtakes include some amazing communications...
[The following is a guest-post written by Ifeoma Ajunwa, a human-rights attorney who is beginning a PhD at Columbia University in the fall. Our thanks to her for contributing -- KJH] In April of 2007, as a representative for the NGO, Human Rights Advocates (HRA), I was privileged to attend the 4th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in...
[Margaret V. Sachs is the Robert Cotten Alston Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and an expert on securities law] The Supreme Court yesterday issued its decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, its first ever on the international reach of Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5. Justice Scalia wrote for the Court, with additional...
The American Society of International Law has an active International Economic Law (IEL) Interest Group. Most notably, it holds a biennial conference geared to a common IEL theme, with the papers presented then collected and published in some form, including THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW, Tomer Broude, Amy Porges and Marc L. Busch eds., Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2010);...
Padania's victory was not in the football (American translation: "soccer") World Cup being played in South Africa but in the one that was just played in Gozo. You know, the Viva World Cup, the tournament among the unrecognized states of the world. The World Cup being played in South Africa is sponsored by FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the governing body of...
I know that will sound like a provocative question, but it's not meant to be. According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel justifies its interdiction of the "Freedom Flotilla" by reference to Article 67(a) of the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflict at Sea, which permits the attack of neutral merchant vessels that "are believed on reasonable...
Skytrax has released its annual list of the world's 10 best airlines. Here they are, from #1 down: Asiana Airlines Singapore Airlines Qatar Airways Cathay Pacific Air New Zealand Etihad Airways Qantas Emirates Thai Airways Malaysia Airlines Two things stand out. First, Asian and Australia/New Zealand dominate. I fly Air New Zealand and Qantas regularly, and think both are excellent. (Air New Zealand is better, as the ratings indicate.) I also...
The news coming out of China of ten suicide deaths at Foxconn industrial park is terribly distressing. All of the workers who committed suicide were recent high school or vocational training school graduates aged between 18 to 24. One of the fatalities, Sun Danyong, jumped to his death after being interrogated over a missing iPhone prototype. Foxconn,...
At the recent Northwestern Law School conference on the Israeli-Arab Dispute and International Law I had the good fortune to address one of the few bright spots in current Arab-Israeli relations. Most international law scholars of the Arab-Israeli conflict seem to know little about international trade, and focus almost exclusively on the laws of war in their discussion of Middle East...
As the smear campaign against Richard Goldstone gets ever more desperate, it seems opportune to provide a bit more information about Israel's support for apartheid, to which Goldstone's pales in comparison. Here is Sasha Polokow-Suransky again, this time responding to attacks on Goldstone by the Speaker of the Knesset and Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister: Goldstone's apartheid-era judicial rulings are undoubtedly a...
