There are an estimated 45,000 US citizens in Haiti, and there's an assumption that they should be first in line to receive US assistance. As Hillary Clinton said yesterday, "They are our principal responsibility, to make sure that they're safe, to evacuate those who need medical care." In his remarks this morning, President Obama stressed that "We will not rest...
Back in 2008, I flagged the great service being done by the Squire Law Library at the University of Cambridge in compiling oral histories from some of the more eminent figures in international law. At the time, I focused on the recorded interviews with Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC (although they'd also done one with Sir Derek Bowett, who passed away...
The National Journal has a two part cover story, January 9, 2010, on Predator drone strikes — required reading for those following the targeted killing and Predator drone developments, and although it is behind a subscription wall, no question that this National Journal issue is making the rounds of Washington and the agencies. If you follow this topic, you’ll want...
With all the talk about the environment and climate change and the with success of eco-themed TV show Life After People, I was struck by this blog post/ photo essay at BLDGBLOG on the degradation of Biosphere 2, the experiment in building a self-contained ecological biosphere in a set of buildings in the Arizona desert. (You can see it in better condition here, with the cheery...
The New York University Law Review has just published an issue in tribute to Thomas Franck. It includes reflections by Richard Revesz, Thomas Buergenthal, Normen Dorsen, Michael Glennon, Harold Koh, Miriam Shapiro, Chris Borgen, Peter Gutherie, and Michael Mattler. Here is a taste from Harold Koh: As I write this today, from the Legal Adviser’s chair, I realize that...
At Greg Shaffer’s invitation I’m joining the discussion to make a couple of small points about some of the concepts used in Greg and Mark’s very interesting and carefully researched book. The first concerns the GMO case as an example of a “regime complex.” When David Victor and I first proposed the concept of a regime complex, we used the...
I have a scholarship question for our readers, particularly those who have been article editors on a law review. On three separate occasions recently, I have seen CVs that identify a particular publication as a "lead article." I always assumed that the order of articles in a non-thematic issue of a law review was more or less random -- or...
The complex and often antagonistic interaction of hard and soft law was clearly one of the most interesting points in the book for several of the commentators, as indeed it was for us. Our core argument here is that hard and soft law can serve not just as complements but also as “antagonists,” both in a conflict-of-laws sense and in...
We are grateful for the praise and the criticisms of our book from distinguished scholars like Sungjoon Cho, Rebecca Bratspies, and Tomer Broude. We are particularly pleased that all three appreciated our efforts to engage in an interdisciplinary and multi-level analysis, to do empirical justice to the complexities of the GMO dispute, and to identify the broader implications of...
Cross-posted at Balkinization The new year starts with no shortage of Gitmo-related matters to blog about, starting with today’s important decision from a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling (for the first time) on the merits of one of the few dozen decided Gitmo habeas petitions. The ruling, affirming the lower court’s decision to deny habeas to...
In their recently published book (“When Cooperation Fails”), Mark Pollack and Gregory Shaffer provided a rare panoramic view of one of the most intractable trans-Atlantic regulatory disputes, i.e., the regulation of genetically modified (GM) foods. One may discover the richness of their thorough study mainly in two aspects. First, the methodology which they employ is not only interdisciplinary but also...
I want to congratulate Mark Pollack and Gregory Shaffer for their recently published book When Cooperation Fails: The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods (Oxford 2009). Using the WTO proceeding as a focal point, When Cooperation Fails explores the vexing question of why multiple international and bilateral initiatives have failed to resolve the transatlantic GMO dispute. The book...
