There is a thoughtful piece in the New Republic by David Fontana, Alex Massie, and Oliver Kamm on the legacy of Tony Blair. I think it adds some real insights on Blair's contributions that were neglected in my previous post. Here is a key excerpt: What, exactly, is Tony Blair's legacy? With Iraq at the center of the news,...
It’s been a very quiet term for the Senate on treaties. But that may be about to change. The Washington Note is reporting that President Bush will soon publicly announce his support for Senate advice and consent to U.S. accession to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the follow-on Implementation Agreement, which...
That's the bottom-line of thoughtful columns from Stuart Taylor and Karen J. Greenberg. (Hat-tips to Ken Anderson and Diane Amann respectively.) It's a harmless proposition, but it has an almost throw-away feel to it. One couldn't, I don't think, expect anything substantively interesting from such an undertaking. Bipartisan study efforts (calling Lee Hamilton!) seem invariably these...
Here's the press release from Starbucks. Starbucks had opposed Ethiopia's filing for trademark rights to three coffee names — Harar, Sidamo and Yirgacheffe — with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In Ethiopia's corner, Arnold & Porter took the matter pro bono (anyone who thinks lawyers have gotten slick should take a look at this youTube item with partner...
A warm welcome to Jacob Cogan and his new blog, International Law Reporter. Cogan—an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and a former colleague of mine at the State Department Legal Adviser’s Office—describes his blog in general terms, covering “scholarship, events, and ideas in international law, international relations, and foreign affairs law.”...
In commemoration of Mother’s Day, I wanted to review a wonderful play I saw in London over the weekend. The play Kindertransport by Diane Samuels personalizes the story of almost ten thousand unaccompanied Jewish children who traveled from Germany to England in 1938. But really the play is about a refugee child and her mother, and the struggle...
The U.S. Trade Representative's Office has released some further details on its agreement with Congress to incorporate international labor standards into future U.S. free-trade agreements. Here are a couple important new institutional innovations. (1) Violations of international and local labor standards will apparently be subject to the same international dispute resolution mechanisms as the rest of the trade agreement. This...
President Bush has always insisted that he only went to war with Iraq as a last resort, in response to Saddam's refusal to disarm:"Of course, I haven’t made up my mind we’re going to war with Iraq." [10/1/02] "You said we’re headed to war in Iraq — I don’t know why you say that. I hope we’re not headed to war...
Thanks to a recent bilateral arrangement, you can now enjoy Indian mangos in the United States. To hear Indians talk about this, the issue is more important than nukes or Kashmir. The first shipments arrived this week in New York. Fruit flies had been the problem; irradiation the answer, a good enough one for USDA. (The US,...
My time as guest blogger here at Opinio Juris is coming to an end. Many thanks to Chris and the other permanent contributors for inviting me, as well as to all of the readers and commenters of my posts. I've enjoyed it, and I certainly hope you did too. All the best, Marko ...
Oxford University Press has just launched a new online database called International Law in Domestic Courts. It is edited by Professors André Nolkaemper and Erika de Wet of the University of Amsterdam. The Board of Editors includes Dinah Shelton and Ralph Steinhardt, among other luminaries. The goal of the database is to collect all the major domestic...
President Bush and Democratic leaders in the U.S. Congress have reached an agreement on a bipartisan trade policy to be applied to all future U.S. free-trade agreements. According to one account, the new policy commits U.S. trade partners to adopting and enforcing laws that abide by basic international labor standards as outlined in a 1998 International Labor Organization declaration....
