Article XX(a) of the GATT allows countries to violate WTO rules if doing so is “necessary to protect public morals.” The “public morals” exception is notoriously elusive, with only one WTO case—the US-Gambling Services case—clarifying the scope of the exception. So in a real sense we don’t really know when “public morals” can or cannot be invoked. ...
Career diplomat Nicholas Burns has an essay in Newsweek on the whole "negotiate with adversaries" kerfuffle. (Yeah, I said "kerfuffle" because that's about all it deserves.) He begins: One of the sharpest and most telling differences on foreign policy between Barack Obama and John McCain is whether the United States should talk to difficult and disreputable leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
Sundays are a bit slow around OJ, so I thought I might offer (unless my confreres think it too far off topic) a series of indeterminate run, Sundays with Stendhal, featuring quotes from various works of the master. Stendhal was a diplomat in much of his career, a figure of a transborder European elite culture, and is also a figure...
Take five minutes out of your busy day and watch this interview, which would be hysterical if it was a Saturday Night Live send-up of an interview by a conservative newscaster, but is just sad because it's real. Notice how little the interviewer -- who is clearly animatronic and programmed by Powerline and Hugh Hewitt -- knows about "socialism" and...
Over at the excellent polls/politics site FiveThirtyEight, Sean Quinn describes an Obama volunteer working doors in Virginia: Back in Charlottesville, we encountered Alex Englehard, a German from Heidelberg pursuing his legal degree and on break after his fifth-year exams. Englehard, a dedicated full-time Obama volunteer, said many Americans "don't realize how big an impact this one election has on the rest of...
In a sign of increasing election-eve desperation on the Right, respectable Republicans (Andrew McCarthy, for one) appear now to be taking seriously the argument that Obama does not meet constitutional eligibility requirements for the presidency. A suit has been filed in Pennsylvania seeking declarative relief to that effect, on two grounds: 1) he was born not in Hawaii but...
One of the most important Alien Tort Statute cases has begun in California that will test the scope of corporate liability under international law. The facts are hotly disputed but either version is truly bizarre. Over 100 Nigerians seize a Chevron oil platform on May 25, 1998. Plaintiffs argue that it was a peaceful nonviolent act of...
I have been a big fan of Andrew Sullivan's writing for a couple of decades (since his TNR days), and have read his blog pretty regularly for the past four years. He has an interesting essay up at The Atlantic's newly redesigned site, "Why I Blog." From the intro: This form of instant and global self-publishing, made possible by technology widely...
For interested readers, our friend and colleague Bobby Ahdieh sends along the following information about fellowships with the Princeton University Program in Law and Public Affairs. The fellows program has typically hosted at least one or two public international law scholars (several of them are OJ alums!). Past fellows rave about the experience -- the time to focus on a...
While I am on the subject of relatively new blogs, I have to confess that I've been remiss in plugging one of my favorites, wronging rights, the product of the brilliant and fiendish minds of Amanda Taub and Kate Cronin-Furman. (For their "self-descriptions," see here.) I stand behind my description of the blog that they have kindly quoted on their...
Anyone interested in genocide issues would do well to check out the (relatively) new Stop Genocide Blog, a solo effort by the mysterious Michelle F. that is part of change.org's blog network. It's wonderfully written and follows Darfur, the DRC, and other situations much more closely than I do here. Check it out!...
I apologize for arriving late to the party; I have only just had a chance to read Professor Ring's fascinating article completely through. There are many reasons why I would come to this article already predisposed to like it - I started out life as an international tax lawyer, for example, and I am also an unapologetic defender within the...
