In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

12 Aug

Last week I wrote a post suggesting that the federal "cash for clunkers" program did not violate the WTO subsidies program because it did not have the de facto or de jure effect of discriminating against foreign imports. But what about the broader Obama stimulus program? Does that pass WTO muster? This article from Bloomberg published last week...

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11 Aug

Although this is pretty far from my usual focus, I've been interested to see the August D.C. doldrums filled in part with an interesting emerging discussion of what happens next with the U.S. and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her "great regret" in Kenya last week that the United States hadn't yet ratified the...

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11 Aug

I have been meaning to post about Melbourne Law School, my new academic home.  I imagine many of our readers will be familiar with our remarkable contingent of international law faculty: James Hathaway (our Dean), Gerry Simpson, Anne Orford, Diane Otto, Tim McCormack, and more than a dozen others.  What readers might not know is that Melbourne is in the...

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06 Aug

I just learned the sad news of the passing of Professor John Barton of my alma mater, Stanford Law School. The Stanford Law press release can be found here.  John was a dedicated and learned scholar, a wonderful mentor and a delightful man to be around.  He will be greatly missed. I was fortunate to get to know John during my first year...

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06 Aug

Eugene Volokh has this post on the merits of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.  He's against it.  Volokh highlights several operative provisions that he finds objectionable on policy grounds, and argues that we shouldn't sign on to treaties that we don't intend to comply with. What's striking about the post is the exceptionalist premise that US isolation...

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02 Aug

I want to thank the folks at OJ for having me over the past two weeks. You have all made me feel at home and I've enjoyed it very much. I've especially appreciated the opportunity to discuss legal issues stemming from upheaval in the African Great Lakes region. Some of these issues have been on my mind...

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02 Aug

Until his arrest by the Rwandan military earlier this year, General Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi and former chairman of the Congolese Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), had been considered one of the key destabilizing figures in eastern Congo. Back in 2004, Nkunda and his rebel troops took control of the South Kivu town of Bukavu,...

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01 Aug

It's the colossal human catastrophe that just won't go away. And closing our eyes and wishing it were so is not going to work. There are new reports of fresh fighting, and widespread internal displacement and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to UNHCR, some 56,000 people have been forced to flee renewed armed conflict...

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01 Aug

Um, somehow I don't think the analogy works: The nation – its economy and political body – has been strapped down, blindfolded and hosed. A new administration, empowered by control of both houses of Congress and the most liberal president in history, is immersing us all in a torrent of debt. While we gasp for breath and try to cry "Time...

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31 Jul

The Economist reports this week (August 1, 2009, p 64), "Remittances to developing countries: what goes up," that remittance payments by immigrants, legal and illegal, from developed countries to developing countries has shrunk by a lot.  Remittances held up during 2008 but they are a lagging indicator of economic distress, and in 2009 were shrinking radically: [T]he chances that remittances will...

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