Search: crossing lines
19 Jul Trail Smelter Redux (a.k.a. “Superfund Returns”)
...last year in Spector v. Norwegian Cruise Lines, in deciding to avoid the presumption against extraterritoriality issue by focusing on a statute’s regulation of conduct within the United States while downplaying any attendant extraterritorial impacts. In Spector, the Supreme Court held that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) generally applied to foreign-flag cruise ships in U.S. waters notwithstanding complaints that such an application would control cruise-ship operations and facilities outside of U.S. territory and conflict with foreign laws. Similarly, here, CERCLA may be applied only within U.S. territory in the...09 Mar How Microfinance Transformed a Filipino Mountain Village
...part of Notre Dame’s award-winning business school class entitled, Business on the Front Lines. The class has around thirty business, law, and peace studies students who focus for a semester on four specific case studies of social entrepreneurship. After weeks of study, the students travel during spring break to the countries and do field analysis. I’m here with six students, and there are three other teams right now in Nicaragua, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. You can read about their exploits here. We work with Catholic Relief Services, which is one...08 Mar Texas’ Last Stand on Medellin
...But even after this admission, this report suggests Texas has changed its position and will contest the authority of the President to order it to comply with the ICJ order. According to its spokesman, [Texas] respectfully believe[s] the executive determination exceeds the constitutional bounds for federal authority. The State of Texas believes no international court supersedes the laws of Texas or the laws of the United States. This statement (thanks to Carlos Vazquez for the heads up) suggests two lines of resistance (further suggested by Lederman’s pointer): (1) that the...02 Oct Kiobel Roundtable: The Alien Tort Statute, Kiobel, and Extraterritoriality
...pose to U.S. foreign relations), while leaving open other potential applications of the ATS, such as to U.S. citizens and corporations (for which the United States may have some responsibility) and to foreign citizens residing in the United States (on the ground that the United States has an interest in not being a haven to human rights abusers). Although it is hazardous to make any predictions from oral argument, a number of the Justices during the reargument in Kiobel appeared to be searching for an intermediate approach along these lines....21 Sep Events and Announcements: September 21, 2014
...far along the paper is. Because of the nature of the workshop, we can only include working drafts that have not yet been accepted for publication. We also workshop early stage projects. If you are interested in presenting on an early stage project, please let us know the working title and a few lines about the idea you are pursuing. Finally, if you are interested in being a discussant, please let us know. We will do our best to get back to everyone in November, and, for those whose working...14 May Translating Citizenship Outside the State
...liberal democracy is possible beyond the state as constituted by citizens. I think I come out somewhere in between. I agree with Alex that citizenship most readily translates to other forms of territorial governance. Citizenship in the European Union, for example, doesn’t pose a major theoretical challenge. It doesn’t look all that different from citizenship in federal states such as the US. But anything else is much trickier. I’m hardly proposing the end of history here. But conflict and group definition will increasingly be drawn along non-territorial lines. How does...04 Feb A Response to Tom Ginsburg, Michael Vandenbergh, Mark Cohen, and Jonathan Wiener
...as well. We agree that the US and other countries have internal divisions that complicate their attempts to deal with climate change. We argue, however, that the differences in China are of a far greater magnitude than the blue state/red State divisions in the US and have more serious consequences for climate change. Eastern China is 5 times richer than Western China and the most serious fault lines that produce social instability—rich and poor, industrialized and agrarian, urbanized and rural—fit the East/West divide. Moreover, in the US, blue states turn...20 Aug Emerging Voices: The Joint Obligation to Protect Witnesses in the Fight against Transnational Organized Crime
...measures aimed at granting adequate “assistance in relocating protected witnesses abroad and ensuring their protection [and] exchange of information between authorities responsible for witness protection programmes” (ibidem). When a state implements judicial assistance mechanisms, its obligation to guarantee adequate protection of witnesses is extended across the state’s boundary lines, with a resulting surveillance obligation on the activity of the state requested of the assistance. This aspect should be considered by the requesting state when deciding to have recourse to judicial assistance both when a protected witness has to be heard...
18 Mar ENMOD: Dodo, Dormant or Presciently Divine?
...is a 1977 convention that prohibits its contracting parties from engaging in “military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party” (Article I). It is the treaty at the source of Principle 17 of the UN International Law Commission’s Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict, and Rule 3.B of the ICRC Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict. The International...15 Dec Ban Ki-Moon Sworn in as UN Secretary-General
Here is the text of the speech by new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. There are a few good lines from the speech, such as the following: Member States need a dynamic and courageous Secretariat, not one that is passive and risk-averse. The time has come for a new day in relations between the Secretariat and Member States. The dark night of distrust and disrespect has lasted far too long. We can begin by saying what we mean, and meaning what we say. We cannot change everything at once. But we...