As the NYT reports, the U.S. Justice Department has released a memo defending the legality of the controversial NSA spying program. The NYT (of course) barely describes the memo and then devotes half of the article to quotes by legal experts who say it is unpersuasive. Dean Robert Reinstein speaks of a scholarly consensus that the NSA program is illegal.Unbelievably,...
Human Rights Watch issued its 2006 annual report yesterday. The press release focused on the United States "conscious policy choice by senior U.S. government officials" to engage in abusive inerrogation. That policy has "hampered Washington’s ability to cajole or pressure other states into respecting international law." “Responsibility for the use of torture and mistreatment can no longer credibly be passed...
Interesting decision by an English court (Queens Bench Commercial Court) that email is sufficient to arbitrate a maritime dispute under the English Arbitration Act 1996. Notice of the arbitration, together with various subsequent communications and briefings, were all done by email. Before rendering the award, the arbitrator noted that "No Defence submissions were received at any time. [But] I was...
Interesting story coming out of China about the dispute between Starbucks and Xinbake, which is a major Chinese competitor. "Xin" means star and "bake" is pronounced "bah kuh." So Starbucks sued and a Chinese court ordered Xinbake to change its name because it was engaging in "illegitimate competition." (Hat tip: How Appealing) I love this tidbit...
Joel Trachtman of the Fletcher School and Petros Mavroidis of Columbia Law School have started the International Economc Law and Policy Blog. The opening salvo of posts have touched on topics ranging from the trade in caviar and the protection of endangered species, to the governance of cyberspace, to World Bank conditionality and sovereignty, to the judgeing style of the...
Professor Arthur von Mehren, Story Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, passed away yesterday at the age of 83. The Harvard statement on his death is here. Professor von Mehren was one of the pioneers in American legal education in the fields of comparative law, choice of laws, international litigation and international commercial arbitration. Professor von...
Big Lumber has filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit further elaborating its attack on the constitutionality of part of the NAFTA review process (which I described briefly here). Their brief is not yet available online (UPDATE: the brief can be accessed here. Thanks to reader Simon Lester for the pointer). I do...
Last week the Ninth Circuit en banc issued an important decision in Yahoo! v. LICRA. In a complicated judgment, it concluded that it does have personal jurisdiction over LICRA and UEJF, but that the combination of votes against personal jurisdiction and ripeness required dismissal of the case without prejudice. It is a complex decision with forty-pages of opinion, so I...
To the relief of margarita drinkers all over the U.S., the United States and Mexico signed an agreement Tuesday that will allow continued bulk shipments of tequila from Mexico into the United States. Since 2003, Mexico has been threatening to require all tequila from Mexico to be bottled in Mexico, thus threatening U.S. bottling company jobs (and that ever...
Nigeria announced today that it had finally reached an agreement with Cameroon to implement a 2002 ICJ decision demarcating part of the boundary between the two countries.To put it bluntly, it is about time. The original case was filed in the ICJ in 1994 and the final judgment was issued in 2002. Even after this judgment on the merits, the...
Opinio Juris welcomes "Truth on the Market" to the law prof blogosphere. My friend and colleague Thom Lambert, along with Geoff Manne, Bill Sjostrom, Keith Sharfman, Josh Wright, and one anonymous blogger, will be blogging about "law, business, economics and more." We wish them a successful launch and happy blogging!...
Still more news today on Holocaust litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in the Ninth Circuit case of Alperin v. Vatican Bank. The order list is here. The Ninth Circuit ruled earlier this year that the property claims by plaintiffs should not be dismissed under the political question doctrine but that the "war objective claims" should be...
