Both Eugene and Maggie disagree with my claim that politically-motivated acts of violence on the high seas were not traditionally considered piracy under international law, but were instead simply criminal acts that the offended state could prosecute as it saw fit. Here is Eugene (my emphasis; combining two comments):

The rule is clear as both a matter of customary international law and the Law of the Sea Convention. On the latter score, the “private” ends requirement of the UNCLOS Art. 101 (which defines piracy) has to be read in conjunction with Art. 102, which distinguishes between “warship” or “government ship” – which cannot commit piracy while under governmental control and “private” ships, which are the kind that can be pirates. Thus “private” clearly means “non-governmental,” rather than selfish or not selfish.

I would add that the Harvard commentary only seems to make an exception for the classic hard case – rebel warships in an actual belligerency. The International Law Commission seems to endorse that exception in its commentary to the treaty draft, but at the same time seem to exclude merchant vessels not in a belligerent context from an possible immunity.

There are three problems with Eugene’s argument. First, it does not address the League of Nations report, which specifically states that politically-motivated acts do not qualify as piracy. The report adopted a private/political binary, not a private/public one. Second, the Harvard commentary does not make an exception only for “rebel warships in an actual belligerency.” On the contrary, the commentary specifically rejects the idea that the exception applies only to rebel groups that have been recognized as belligerents. Here is the quote from my previous post (emphasis mine)…

As Julian noted earlier, the Ninth Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Kozinski, has decided that anti-whaling activism qualifies as piracy if it involves violence against a ship on the high seas. I’m running short for time right now, but I want to briefly respond to Kozinski’s key claim about the traditional understanding of piracy’s “private ends” requirement (p.4; emphasis mine; internal citations omitted):

The district court construed “private ends” as limited to those pursued for “financial enrichment.” But the common understanding of “private” is far broader. The term is normally used as an antonym to “public” (e.g., private attorney general) and often refers to matters of a personal nature that are not necessarily connected to finance (e.g., private property, private entrance, private understanding and invasion of privacy)…. We give words their ordinary meaning unless the context requires otherwise. The context here is provided by the rich history of piracy law, which defines acts taken for private ends as those not taken on behalf of a state.

Kozinski doesn’t mention any of the historical sources that ostensibly constitute this “rich history”; he simply cites the dictionary definition of “private” and a 25-year-old Belgian case that has never been followed by any other court. But that’s not surprising: although the traditional understanding of piracy is not limited to acts of violence motivated by the desire for financial gain (an error made by many scholars and activists), there is significant historical support for the idea that piracy specifically excludes acts of violence that are politically motivated.  Here, for example, is what the rapporteur of the League of Nations Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law had to say in 1927 about the meaning of “private ends” (emphasis added)…

In a tartly worded opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has reversed a lower court and granted a group representing Japanese whalers a preliminary injunction against the protest activities of Sea Shepherd.  Here is Judge Alex Kozinski’s  instantly quotable opening to the opinion:

You don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch. When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be.

Interestingly, the Cetacean Institute (the group representing Japanese whalers) had sued Sea Shepherd under the Alien Tort Statute.  In particular, Cetacean alleged that the Sea Shepherd groups had engaged in “piracy” within the meaning of customary international law, and the Court (as you can see above) agreed with them.

The Ninth Circuit opinion doesn’t seem troubled by tricky questions such as whether piracy is one of the causes of action recognized by the Alien Tort Statute after Sosa v. Alvarez Machain, but given the language in that opinion, I suppose it is safe to assume piracy is indeed an acceptable ATS action.  I wonder more about Cetacean’s basis for a preliminary injunction pursuant to violations of the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collision at Sea.  I am going to assume the Court found the former two treaties self-executing, but a little analysis here would have been helpful.

I’m no expert on the definition of piracy, so take this with a grain of salt. I am with the Court on the view that the “violence” element was satisfied, but I am less confident of the Court’s conclusion that “private ends” needed to satisfy an element of piracy includes goals other than financial enrichment.  This seems a reasonable interpretation in the context of this case, but it is also an obviously reviewable and debatable issue on appeal to the full en banc court.

So this case is far from the last word. Sea Shepherd has made clear that they will appeal this order and in any event ignore the U.S. court’s order on the theory that Sea Shepherd (Australia) is unconnected with the defendants in the U.S. proceeding. The Court of Appeals here seems to have ordered the removal of the lower court judge from this case and stands ready to issue orders to further enforce its preliminary injunction.   Whale Wars will go on.

As we wait with bated breath for the Supreme Court’s decision in Kiobel, it is worth remembering that there are viable alternatives to ATS litigation. That was particularly evident last week when The Hague District Court in the case of Akpan/Royal Dutch Shell. Here’s the Judicial Press Release (translated by Pieter Bekker):

Four Nigerian farmers and fishermen, together with Milieudefensie, commenced the lawsuits in The Netherlands, because they hold four entities within the Shell group, with its headquarters in The Hague, accountable for the damage resulting from four specific oil spills near their villages in Nigeria. The district court has found that the four oil spills were not the result of poor maintenance by Shell, but were caused by sabotage by third parties. Based on the applicable Nigerian law, an oil company in principle is not liable for oil spills resulting from sabotage. On this principal ground, all claims in four out of the five cases have been dismissed. With regard to the four lawsuits regarding an oil spill near the village of Goi in 2004 and an oil spill near the village of Oruma in 2005, the district court is of the view that Shell Nigeria took sufficient measures to prevent sabotage of its submerged oil pipelines. For this reason, and applying the general rule of Nigerian law, the Hague district court has dismissed the claims of plaintiffs Oguru, Efanga and Dooh in those four lawsuits.

In the lawsuit concerning two oil spills near the village of Ikot Ada Udo, the district court has ruled that Shell Nigeria has violated its ‘duty of care’ under applicable Nigerian law and has committed the ‘tort of negligence.’ In 2006 and 2007, an act of sabotage was committed in a very simple way near that village by using an English wrench to remove above-ground heads of an oil well abandoned by Shell Nigeria. Shell Nigeria could and should have easily prevented the sabotage by installing a concrete plug prior to 2006, whereas it only did so in 2010 while the lawsuit was pending. Consequently, the district court has ordered Shell Nigeria (i.e., Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd, the Nigerian subsidiary of the Shell group) in that case to pay compensation to the Nigerian plaintiff, Mr. Akpan. The amount of compensation will need to be determined in a separate procedure, because to date the parties have only litigated the issue of liability, and the level of damages has not been addressed. Milieudefensie has brought the lawsuits together with the Nigerian plaintiffs. In the view of the district court, Milieudefensie has standing to defend environmental interests in Nigeria before the courts in The Netherlands. However, according to Nigerian law the oil spills in Nigeria are not unlawful vis-à-vis Milieudefensie and for this reason the claims of Milieudefensie have been dismissed.

Dutch courts and the parent companies of Shell The cases have been adjudicated by the Dutch court, because the claims are not only directed at Shell Nigeria, but also target the current British parent company of Shell, which has its headquarters in The Hague. The former parent companies of the Shell group in London and The Hague have also been sued. In interim rulings issued in 2009 and 2010, the district court ruled that it is justified to adjudicate the lawsuits against all Shell entities in The Netherlands, because those lawsuits are all closely connected.

In its final rulings of 30 January 2013, the district court has dismissed all claims against the parent companies, because (in short) under Nigerian law a parent company in principle is not obligated to prevent its subsidiaries from injuring third parties abroad and in the present case there are no special reasons to deviate from the general rule.

Here is a portion of Bekker’s commentary on the ruling (reprinted from OGEMID listserve with Pieter Bekker’s permission):

On January 30, 2013, the district court in The Hague, The Netherlands, announced in a press release that it has ruled that Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd. (SPDC or “Shell Nigeria”), a member of the Royal Dutch Shell group of companies, is liable to pay compensation to plaintiff Friday Alfred Akpan, a resident of the Nigerian village of Ikot Ada Udo situated in Akwa Ibom State in the Niger Delta. Applying Nigerian law, the Dutch court found that Shell Nigeria had breached its duty of care and had committed the tort of negligence by failing to take sufficient measures to prevent sabotage by third persons to Shell Nigeria’s submerged pipelines near the Nigerian village in 2006 and 2007. The amount of compensation will be determined in a subsequent phase of the proceeding. The full text of the ruling (in Dutch) is yet to be released.

The lawsuit against Shell constitutes the first time that a Dutch multinational has been sued before a civil court in The Netherlands in connection with allegations of damage caused abroad by a subsidiary and appears to be part of a trend of plaintiffs from the developing world turning to the courts in developed countries for redress against multinationals.

Four Nigerian farmers and fishermen, along with Milieudefensie, the Dutch branch of the environmental group Friends of the Earth, had brought five separate lawsuits against four Shell entities and their parent company before the District Court in The Hague, claiming compensation for oil pollution damage suffered locally by the Nigerian plaintiffs in four incidents between 2004 and 2007, and allegedly caused by poor maintenance on the part of the Shell defendants.

The Hague court dismissed all claims in all but one proceeding after finding that the oil contamination was caused by sabotage by third persons as opposed to Shell’s poor maintenance of its local oil installations and that there was no evidence of Shell’s negligence in those cases. Under Nigerian law, an oil company in principle is not liable for oil pollution damage caused by third-party sabotage.

Importantly, the court dismissed all claims against Shell Nigeria’s co-defendant and parent company, Royal Dutch Shell plc, which has its headquarters in The Hague, referring to the general rule of Nigerian law according to which a parent company is not obligated to prevent foreign subsidiaries from injuring third parties abroad and finding no special reasons to deviate from the general rule. The court had found in interim rulings that it had jurisdiction over the claims against all of the Shell defendants because those claims were closely connected.

While the court accepted the Dutch environmental group’s standing to defend environmental interests in Nigeria before the courts in The Netherlands alongside the Nigerian plaintiffs, it rejected the NGO’s claims because oil pollution in Nigeria is not unlawful vis-à-vis the Dutch-based group under Nigerian law.

All plaintiffs have announced that they will appeal the district court’s ruling insofar as it concerns the court’s dismissal of the four other lawsuits and its rejection of the claims against the parent company.

The full text of the opinion (in Dutch) is available here. For more on Dutch human rights and environmental rulings similar to Akpan, see this amicus brief.

As I will discuss in greater detail later, such cases strongly suggest that domestic tort laws may be a viable alternative solution to ATS litigation. There is a wealth of cases (including US cases) applying tort law and conflict of laws that address many of the same factual scenarios that are presented in ATS litigation. Such cases will be particularly important if, as I suspect, the Supreme Court narrowly construes the ATS in Kiobel.

UPDATE: An English translation of the decision is available here.

I posted a few weeks ago about the scandalous situation of adulterated Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) exported from Italy, Greece, and Spain.  Here is an update on the international olive oil market from Ed Dolan of EconoMonitor.  He reports that cold weather in Spain, followed by drought, has shrunk the Spanish harvest:

There is little doubt about what is happening on the supply side of the market: The weather in Spain, the world’s largest producer, was unusually bad last year. In the spring, an unexpected frost damaged the trees just as they were blossoming. Summer brought a prolonged drought. By December, which should be the height of the 2012/13 harvest, the Spanish crop was coming in at just 44 percent of the year before.

The harvest has been better elsewhere, but … Spain so dominates the world market that no one else can really make up the loss. Tunisia is trying. The fifth largest producer and fourth largest exporter, its production is expected to rise by 27 percent in the 2012-13 season. California will also have a good year. Growers there hope to reach 3 percent of world output this year, up from the 1 percent or less reported by the FAO for 2011. But none of that is going to go far in replacing the hundreds of thousands of tons of lost Spanish production.

Dolan also notes that demand over the long run is sharply on the rise.  The US consumer market is embracing EVOO as a healthy oil, and Brazil and China are seeing strong increases in demand over time.  Long term, demand is healthy and rising.  (Lest anyone doubt this, Dolan reports that Wrangler jeans has introduced a line of “olive-oil infused jeans” to moisturize the wearer’s legs while wearing.)  Production is up in other places – California, Tunisia and Morocco, South Africa, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand – all of which produce some very fine EVOO.  However, Spain so dominates production today that for the short term, expect price hikes for all olive oil, as evidenced in this olive oil futures chart (click for larger version):

One thing Dolan does not address is the effect of these supply and demand factors on the nasty little secret of this burgeoning market – adulteration of EVOO, as discussed in my earlier post.  We can make some guesses, however.  One is that the constriction of supply is going to push more adulteration, whether with lesser grades of olive oil or simply other oils such as cottonseed. If that does not become widely known then it might actually entrench adulteration even more as the norm. (If that’s possible, given that some officials in the EU suggest that 50% of the EVOO-labelled oil is actually adulterated with either lesser grades or non-olive oil.  The chances that an “Italian” oil you buy even at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s in the US is pure EVOO is likely not better than 50%, and any any case, the export rules allow Italian packers, for example, to import oil from Spain or Greece, or outside the EU, such as Morocco, package it with a pretty Tuscan villa on the label, and sell it as Italian, according to Tom Mueller’s book, as I discussed in my earlier post. The losers in this game are the artisanal EVOO producers in Italy and Spain, who do produce the pure and much more expensive stuff, but can’t get clear identification and differentiation of their products in the export market.)

Many consumers are not likely to care, interestingly – at least, not if the consequence of enforcing the purity standard meant that the price of real EVOO went up a lot, as it would have to absent adulteration.  Those who do care are tending to shift to trusted sources, which often means shortening the supply chain. In my case, that means shifting to California EVOOs (as a Californian who has been in exile his adult life, I have a sentimental interest as well) – there are in fact sources I trust in Italy and Spain. Australia and New Zealand have much more trustworthy systems of labeling EVOO and certifying it than Europe these days, I sorrow to say. And all these places produce many superb EVOOs.  But one has to be prepared to pay for it, both because of the spike in prices due to the poor Spanish harvest – but also because if you want the real stuff, it’s going to cost you more.

Rob has an excellent post today at Prawfsblawg extolling the potential of American legal education. It is nice to see someone dissenting from the conventional doom and gloom, and Rob makes a number of valuable points. But I feel compelled to take issue with (1) his description of non-American legal education, and (2) his assessment of the potential for American law schools to attract large numbers of foreign students. Here, in relevant part, is what he argues:

The potential of America’s law schools is only starting to be realized.

The global market for US legal education was traditionally regarded as composed of a relatively small group of foreign-educated lawyers seek advanced degrees. But this changing. Increasingly, a US JD degree is an attractive option for foreign students. And you have probably noticed more non-US JDs in your classes. In most countries law is the subject of a first degree after high school. The market could be expanded of US law schools were to offer a combination undergraduate degree in another discipline and a law degree-what about a 5 or 6 year program that leads to a BA in economics or political science or philosophy and a JD?

The fact is that American law schools have a competitive advantage. To be sure there is excellent legal education in some other countries. But my considerable global experience suggests to me that those countries are few. In most places, legal education is dominated by old-fashioned rote learning and by professors who spend much if not most of their time in private practice. Innovation is rare and slow. Class sizes are often huge.

If we are not distracted by US News rankings, we will observe that in all kinds of law schools all across the US there are world class intellectuals and leading specialists on the faculty. Of course national law schools abroad have a captive audience of students who can’t study in English and/or whose first and immediate priority is to qualify for the local bar or who can’t afford foreign study (though we can reach out to the last group through distance education and foreign campuses).   But overall the number of students with global ambitions, and the prevalence of English as a global language of law, are growing, from what I can tell.

It would have been nice if Rob had named names, because his rather dismissive description of legal education outside of the US strikes me as significantly overbroad. Does legal education in most non-American law schools involve little more than rote learning at the hands of non-academics? Rob is certainly not describing New Zealand or Australia, where I’ve held permanent positions. He isn’t describing Canada — especially not his own alma mater, the University of Toronto! — or most good UK law schools. Is he describing schools in countries with civil-law systems? I hope readers will weigh in, because my evidence is merely anecdotal. That said, I don’t think Rob’s description applies to the Netherlands or most Scandinavian countries. It may be somewhat more true of German legal education, though it certainly doesn’t describe all German law schools. I also doubt it is true of elite Asian law schools, such as National University of Singapore or the University of Hong Kong.

Frankly, I’m not even sure how well Rob is describing American legal education — at least in general.  His rosy picture of innovative teaching orchestrated by full-time academics dedicated to legal scholarship clearly applies to elite American law schools, but does it really describe the situation at lower-ranked law schools — even quite prestigious ones?  As Rob points out, there are excellent scholars in many, perhaps most, American law schools.  But that does not mean American legal education is excellent no matter where a student goes to law school.  Nor does it mean that legal education is generally better in the US than in other countries.

I am also skeptical of Rob’s belief that foreign law students represent a vast and largely untapped market for American law schools.  His point about the greater value of a JD on the international market is well taken; my law school, Melbourne, recently shifted to a JD-only model precisely in order to maximize the international marketability of our law graduates. I also agree that a graduate law degree can be a significant draw for students in countries where law is an undergraduate subject; approximately 15% of our JD students come from outside Australia.

That said, I question whether American law schools are particularly well-situated to attracting foreign students who don’t intend to practice in the US. Most obviously, American legal education is absurdly insular — far more so than legal education anywhere else in the world. Outside of the elite American law schools, students receive almost no education in international law. Comparative law is almost non-existent. All, or nearly all, of the professors are American. Exchange options are limited — and many foreign law schools are off the table, no matter how elite, because they don’t offer graduate-level classes. How much do most non-elite American law students know about how law functions in the rest of the world when they graduate? I’d venture it is vastly less than law students who graduate from law schools almost anywhere else.

And then, of course, there is the expense of American legal education — something that Rob doesn’t even mention. Why would a large number of foreign students want to spend $200,000 on an American JD when they can get law degrees in their home countries for next to nothing (even at the most prestigious law schools) or can attend elite non-American law schools for half the price? (Melbourne falls into the latter category.) Rob suggests that universities create five or six year joint BA/JD programs to attract foreign students. Barring a radical transformation in financial-aid practices, however, attending such a program would simply mean more debt for a foreign student — perhaps more than $300,000. How many non-wealthy foreign students would want, or could handle, that expense?

To be sure, for students able to afford Yale, Stanford, or NYU, the additional expense of a JD may well be worth it — even taking into account that starting legal salaries tend to be much lower outside of the US. But lower-ranked schools? I don’t see it. Given the insular nature and ridiculous expense of American legal education, the primary draw for foreign students will always be the prestige of the degree-granting institution.  So, far from providing salvation, I think that whatever pull the US has on foreign law students will likely do little more than exacerbate the vicious elite/non-elite division that currently characterizes American legal education.

Readers — especially non-American ones? Your thoughts?

This treaty was totally NOT on my radar screen.  But as the NYT reports:

I am delighted to announce that Thomas Graham, the U.S. Member of the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body, will be giving the Shapiro Lecture at Hofstra entitled ”It Sure Looks Different from the Inside: Deciding International Disputes at the WTO.”   Graham has been an observer and a participant in the international trade law system since the 1970s as a USTR attorney, private lawyer, Deputy US Trade Representative, and now as a WTO Appellate Body Member.

For those of you international trade law groupies or international dispute resolution folks trapped living in the NY area this winter, please consider visiting us at Hofstra on February 6.  If you can’t, we will be webcasting it live as well.

(Plainly I’m not above a risqué title to shamelessly drive web traffic but I’m afraid this post is all about fraud in the international extra virgin olive oil trade.)  I’m an unsophisticated but enthusiastic aficionado of extra virgin olive oils, ever since a sabbatical in Spain years ago. I was aware of Tom Mueller’s 2007 New Yorker article on international trade in adulterated extra virgin olive oils (EVOO), but somehow hadn’t read it, as I figured I knew what it said.  Reading Mueller’s subsequent 2011 book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, which my daughter gave me for Christmas, well, I was horrified.  Well, seriously deflated at least; we’re not talking about war crimes here.  But really irritated, speaking as a consumer who has willingly paid not-inconsiderable amounts for EVOO on the theory that college is overrated.

It’s not that my palate is so very refined, I hasten to add. I’ve yet to discover, for example, the “banana” notes in the latest olive oil sample delivered by Santa, let alone the “artichoke” and “berry,” despite oxygenating it while noisily slurping it with the special technique I learned at one tasting (and which drives my wife from the kitchen).  I’m embarrassed to say that I’m not entirely sure I’d be able to identify a bad or even stale (“fusty”) EVOO. I’m even less sure, now that I’ve understood from Mueller’s book just how much of the normal stuff, and even premium priced stuff – and especially the stuff arriving to market shelves in the United States – is low grade ordinary olive oil (“lampante,” meaning fuel or lamp oil), or other seed oils, deodorized and refined through heat and solvents to the point of being tasteless, with a variable amount of EVOO added for flavor.

If I’m dismayed as a consumer, speaking as a professor of international economic law, I’m both shocked and astonished at the levels of fraud in the international EVOO trade.  I naively assumed that olive oil, given its importance in the EU, would be regulated with nearly as much care as wine.  It turns out that, quite apart from illegal adulteration, EU regulations permit olive oil to be brought to Italy from Spain, Greece, and in many cases both legally and illegally from Morocco or Tunisia, processed and packaged and sold as Italian olive oil.  Italian law on adulteration, far from being concerned about the protection of a national reputation for setting the world-standard, demonstrates all the characteristics of regulatory capture.  Mueller’s outrage is not merely on behalf of defrauded consumers worldwide (including the EU and Italian publics, who are no more knowledgeable about olive oil adulteration than people anywhere else), however, but is particularly directed to the economic pressures that the adulteration puts on the mostly smaller producers who do maintain quality standards, in accordance with law.  They simply can’t compete with products that appear indistinguishable from theirs, but whose costs are a mere fraction. (more…)

According to Enough!, the OTP is investigating the actions of M23 and “other parties” in the DRC:

In the aftermath of the March 23 Movement, or M23, seizure of Goma, the International Criminal Court, or ICC,Chief Prosecutor Fatoua Bensouda announced that her office is investigating “allegations of ICC crimes by members and leaders of M23, and by other parties taking advantage of the chaos in the region.” While documenting the M23′s crimes is undeniably important, a robust ICC investigation into the other actors responsible for international crimes being committed across eastern Congo could provide much needed leverage to the international community as it seeks to broker peace in the troubled region.

It seems highly likely that the “other parties” in question are Rwandan military and political officials, who — according to the UN – have “created, equipped, trained, advised, reinforced and directly commanded the M23 rebellion.”  Indeed, the UN believes that a Rwandan general, Gen. Emmanuel Ruvusha, personally directed M23′s recent capture of Goma.

It is probably too much to ask for the ICC to bring charges against Kagame for his support of M23. Nevertheless, charges against senior Rwandan military officers would go a long way toward dispelling Kagame’s carefully-cultivated image as a positive force in Rwanda and the region. I doubt anyone in the region takes that myth seriously, but Kagame still has many credulous supporters in the West.

That said, the ranks of Kagame supporters are thinning.  The UK just announced that it is suspending £21m in aid to Rwanda because of concerns about its actions in the DRC.

A number of commentators have challenged my claim that Articles 11(2) and 12(3) of the Rome Statute would permit Palestine to accept the ICC’s jurisdiction retroactively, whether as a member-state or on an ad hoc basis. Here, for example, is what my friend Jennifer Trahan wrote yesterday at IntLawGrrls:

Even if an entity becomes a “state,” should there be jurisdiction that it can invoke back to a time when (a) there were no clear “nationals” of that state, and (b) there was no clear “territory” of that state, and in fact, even according to the General Assembly there was only an “observer” and not a “state”? (The ICC Office of the Prosecutor has already declined to exercise jurisdiction over this time-period once before.)

Let’s not get carried away here.

I realize that I should have been more precise in my previous post. I was trying to make a more modest point: namely, that the Rome Statute does, in fact, permit retroactive acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction. I did not mean to imply that Palestine itself could necessarily accept jurisdiction over acts committed on its territory before it became a state. Mea culpa.

That said, I think Jennifer makes an equally problematic assumption: that Palestine only became a state on Thursday, as a result of the UNGA vote. As Bill Schabas reminds us, membership in the UN may be relevant to whether an entity qualifies as a state, but it is not dispositive…

I haven’t blogged about Chevron lately, because there has not been much news to report. But I want to mention an excellent article discussing plaintiffs’ efforts to force Chevron to pay at least part of the judgment. The article is written by a financial analyst associated with the investment website Seeking Alpha, so it has no particular ideological axe to grind. Indeed, it strikes me as remarkably fair. Interested readers should check it out.