This story in the continuing saga of Bowoto v. Chevron should give human rights litigants pause: Chevron Corp., which prevailed in a human-rights lawsuit seeking to hold it responsible for the shooting of Nigerian protesters at an oil platform, is seeking nearly $500,000 in legal costs from the villagers who brought the suit. Chevron's claim for reimbursement, filed in...
The collision of two satellites in orbit around the earth, creating a cloud of debris and some amount of risk to the international space station, turns our thoughts to the international law of space. And thence to Glenn Harlan Reynolds, who explains it for us in a column at Popular Mechanics. I, for one, was surprised to actually read the...
Two hundred years of Lincoln, February 12, 1809. ...
I have been meaning to do a post about the Supreme Court's first antidumping decision in decades, but frankly the case is a yawner. The question in United States v. Eurodif is whether the importation of low enriched uranium (LEU) is a good or a service. If it is the latter, then it cannot be subject to antidumping...
I found this article in the Yale Alumni Magazine about Tony Blair's new Faith Foundation absolutely fascinating. Tony Blair is now teaching a course at Yale with the eminent theologian Miroslav Volf on the subject of "Faith and Globalization." According to the article, Blair is trying to use this foundation to encourage interfaith tolerance and dialogue. Given...
The Second Circuit last week rendered another important ATS decision addressing some of the most troublesome issues relating to human rights litigation against corporate defendants. In the case of Abdullahi v. Pfizer, the Second Circuit was faced with the question of whether involuntary medical testing on humans violates international law. Perhaps the most significant part of the decision was the...
My Washington College of Law colleague, Darren Hutchinson - a brilliant and distinguished scholar in constitutional law, jurisprudence, critical race theory and identity theory - takes on Human Rights Watch for the apparent shift in position on rendition it took under the Bush administration and long-time Washington advocacy director Tom Malinowski's comments on rendition under the Obama administration, as reported...
I have a new paper up on SSRN, appearing shortly in the Wayne Law Review, The Assumptions Behind the Assumptions in the War on Terror: Risk Assessment as an Example of Foundational Disagreement in Counterterrorism Policy. Here is the abstract from SSRN, with apologies from the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: This 2007 article (based around an invited conference talk at Wayne...
Although a DC resident, I couldn't persuade myself or my wife to brave the crowds or the cold to attend the inauguration yesterday, and instead watched it instead with a group of friends on hdtv. Leaving aside Chief Justice Roberts fumbling the oath (see last graph in this post for President Obama retaking the oath on January 21), some of...
Great inauguration speech by President Obama. In terms of foreign policy here are my quick thoughts. First, the speech was striking for President Obama's appeal to soft power. "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us,...
The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Monday in the terrorism victim asset attachment case of Iran v. Elahi. (Transcript here). The case is extraordinarily complicated but it boils down to a question of statutory construction. Elahi was one of a handful of terrorism victims who received payment from the United States government under the 2000 Victims...
You can follow the earlier blog posts for my views on closing Guantanamo and the evolution of policy around it ...
