Archive for the ‘International & Comparative Law’ Category

ECHR on Diplomatic Assurance, pt. 2

posted by Elizabeth A. Wilson

I would like to thank Sarah Waldeck and the rest of the Concurring Opinions authors for allowing me to stay on until February 15th.  A lot happened has happened in the past few days with significant implications for international human rights law, but before I turn to these events I want to finish up my thoughts on the recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights in Othman v. United Kingdom.

To briefly recap, the Court’s judgment contained two main holdings. First, it found that diplomatic assurances agreed upon by Jordan and the United Kingdom sufficient to mitigate the risk that the Islamist cleric Omar Othman (a.k.a. Abu Qatada) would be tortured if extradited to Jordan for trial.  Second, it found that transfer to Jordan would expose Othman to an unfair trial, in that it was likely that evidence derived from torture would be used against him.  The second holding effectively bars the United Kingdom from transferring Othman to Jordan. The United Kingdom has 3 months days to appeal the decision to the Grand Chamber.

As promised in my previous post, I want to offer some thoughts here on whether the ECHR persuasively addressed criticism of the post-transfer monitoring arrangement created by MOU and exchange of letters between Jordan and the United Kingdom. The judgment contains some significant weaknesses in this regard, as I detail here:

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  February 6, 2012 at 5:01 pm   Posted in: International & Comparative Law   Print This Post   No Comments

The Yale Law Journal Online: Outcasting, Globalization, and the Emergence of International Law

posted by Yale Law Journal

Preferred citation: Robin Bradley Kar, Outcasting, Globalization, and the Emergence of International Law, 121 YALE L.J. ONLINE 413 (2012), http://yalelawjournal.org/2012/01/31/kar.html.

  February 1, 2012 at 9:15 am   Posted in: International & Comparative Law, Law Rev (Yale)   Print This Post   No Comments

Privacy Torts in Canada and the International Convergence of Privacy Law

posted by Daniel Solove

Over at the HL Chronicle of Data Protection, I have a post entitled Privacy Torts in Canada and the International Convergence of Privacy Law. The post discusses a recent privacy tort case from Ontario, Canada that recognizes the Warren and Brandeis’ privacy tort of intrusion upon seclusion.  From the post:

The recognition of the US privacy torts by a Canadian court is further demonstration of a general trend – the convergence of privacy law across countries around the world.  Although profound differences in the law remain between countries, there has also been significant convergence.

Read the rest of the post over at HL Chronicle.

  January 29, 2012 at 12:44 pm   Posted in: International & Comparative Law, Privacy, Tort Law   Print This Post   No Comments

ECHR on Diplomatic Assurances

posted by Elizabeth A. Wilson

Belated greetings to the CoOp community and thanks to Sarah Waldeck for enabling this opportunity to blog for what is left of January. I had hoped to post initially from Jordan, where I was visiting in January as a consultant for the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI), but the ABA’s regulations do not permit me to blog about the specific people or organizations that I met with during my visit.  I am still seeking clarification on the boundaries between specific information and general impressions, so for the moment I will keep my comments to the public record.  The following reflects my personal judgment only and is not based in any way on information disclosed in meetings held in my recent trip.

For my initial post, I want to set down some thoughts about the decision last week by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Othman (Abu Qatada) v. United Kingdom, a decision effectively prohibiting the U.K. from deporting to Jordan a Islamist cleric who is currently being held in England without charge (and at least in part on the basis of secret evidence) and who has previously been convicted in absentia on terrorism charges in Jordan.

Though Jordan originally requested Othman’s extradition, it appears that the current litigation arises from the U. K.’s desire to deport him from England on national security grounds, rather than try him on terrorism charges.

The ECHR’s decision involved two main holdings:  first, that diplomatic assurances transmitted via a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the United Kingdom and Jordan are sufficient to overcome the likelihood (based on Jordan’s human rights record) that Othman would be tortured if he were returned to Jordan to face trial on terrorism charges; second, that the U.K. would be violate Othman’s human rights nonetheless if it deported him to Jordan because evidence derived from torture would likely be used against in any trial.  My comments here focus mainly on the assurances part of the holding.

It should first be noted that the ECHR has firmly established the principle of judicial review of diplomatic assurances.   This in itself puts the European system far ahead of the United States, in which diplomatic assurances are regarded as the province solely of the executive.   See Report by Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, Promises to Keep:  Diplomatic Assurances in U.S. Terrorism Transfers (Dec. 2010).  The ECHR initially began reviewing diplomatic assurances in cases involving the death penalty.  Its review of diplomatic assurances in terrorism cases began in the wake of revelations in 2004-2005 that, despite assurances to the contrary, Egypt had tortured two terrorism suspects transferred by Sweden, with assistance from the U.S., after rejecting their requests for asylum.  Human rights NGO’s and UN bodies have generally opposed the use of diplomatic assurances, but political consensus within Europe has split over the question whether assurances can be meaningfully regulated, or whether their use should be rejected outright.

Human rights’ NGO’s Amnesty International’s counterterrorism expert Julia Hall called the diplomatic assurances part of the Othman holding “an alarming setback for human rights” and said the decision as a whole was “a case of one step forward, two steps back.”

This I think overstates the extent to which the decision represents something qualitatively new in terms of the Court’s jurisprudence.  As a general matter, the standard used in Othman was set out in an earlier case, Saadi v. Italy (2008), in which the Court rejected assurances from Tunisia that terrorism suspects convicted in abstensia would not be tortured if returned to Tunisia, on the grounds that the assurances given by Tunisia were brief and formulaic and lacked any post-return monitoring system. The Court found that it had the obligation to review the “practical application” of the assurances and outlined a case-by-case approach in which the weight given to the diplomatic assurances depends “on the circumstances obtaining at the material time.” Saadi, para. 148. Subsequent decisions by the ECHR (more than a dozen) have identified particular factors to be considered, such as the national security profile of the individual involved, the availability of post-transfer monitoring, the specificity of the assurances in prohibiting torture, and the receiving country’s general human rights record with respect to torture.  The Court sets out these factors in Othman (para. 189), without indicating any relative weighting among them.  (For an overview of the case law, see Note (Alice Izumo), Diplomatic Assurances Against Torture and Ill-Treatment: European Court of Human Rights Jurisprudence, 42 Colum. Hum. Rgts. L. Rev. 233, 256-273 (2010)).  In at least one earlier case – Gasayev v. Spain (2009)– the court appears to have  found that diplomatic assurances from a country with a poor human rights record on torture (Russia) mitigated the risk involved in transfer, when the assurances specifically stated that international standards would be met and that diplomats from the transferring state would be able to monitor the post-transfer treatment of the detainee. (For some reason, I cannot pull up this case in the ECHR database of cases, but the Court cites it several times in setting out the factors to be considered in evaluating assurances.  Othman, para. 189 (vi), (viii), (xi)). Significantly, Othman, represented by Gareth Peirce, did not stake out a position that diplomatic assurances could in no case be adequate to mitigate the risk of torture, but he did argue that satisfactory standards would be met only in cases where 1) systemic torture had been brought under control and 2) if isolated acts of torture continue, there is an independent monitoring body with proven effectiveness and criminal sanctions against torture.  Othman, para. 168.

What seems to be emerging in the ECHR’s jurisprudence on diplomatic assurances is the requirement that, where a receiving state has a record of systematic torture, assurances must include a monitoring system. Jordan’s dismal record on torture has been the subject of numerous NGO and UN body reports, and the Court agreed with the parties that, “without assurances from the Jordanian Government, there would be a real risk of ill-treatment of the present applicant if he were returned to Jordan.”  Othman, para. 192. Several factors convinced the Court that the MOU would, in effect, rebut the presumption that Othman would be tortured if returned to Jordan.  The Court found the MOU in the Othman case to be particularly strong.  Indeed, the Court stated that the Jordan-U.K. MOU is “superior in both its detail and its formality to any assurances which the Court has previously examined.”  Othman, para. 194.  More importantly, the MOU provided for a monitoring system, and the Court also examined its terms of reference.  The Othman decision also makes much of the strength of the diplomatic ties between Jordan and the U.K. and the apparent political will in Jordan to fulfill the conditions in the MOU.

In my next post, I will look at the details of the monitoring agreement in more detail and evaluate whether the general and specific objections of human rights NGO’s have been persuasively addressed by the Court.

  January 23, 2012 at 1:05 pm   Posted in: International & Comparative Law, Uncategorized   Print This Post   No Comments

Stanford Law Review Online: The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man

posted by Stanford Law Review

The Stanford Law Review Online has just published an Essay by Yale’s Stephen L. Carter entitled The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man. He provides a retrospective on the War in Iraq and discusses the ethical and legal implications of the War on Terror and “anticipatory self-defense” in the form of targeted killings going forward. He writes:

Iraq was war under the beta version of the Bush Doctrine. The newer model is represented by the slaying of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen deemed a terror threat. The Obama Administration has ratcheted the use of remote drone attacks to unprecedented levels—the Bush Doctrine honed to rapier sharpness. The interesting question about the new model is one of ethics more than legality. Let us assume the principal ethical argument pressed in favor of drone warfare—to wit, that the reduction in civilian casualties and destruction of property means that the drone attack comports better than most other methods with the principle of discrimination. If this is so, then we might conclude that a just cause alone is sufficient to justify the attacks. . . . But is what we are doing truly self-defense?

Read the full article, The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man by Stephen L. Carter, at the Stanford Law Review Online.

  January 16, 2012 at 1:13 pm  Tags: anticipatory self-defense, Current Events, drones, iraq war, president bush, president obama, targeted killings, UAVs  Posted in: International & Comparative Law, Law Rev (Stanford), Legal Ethics, Military Law, Technology   Print This Post   5 Comments

Stanford Law Review Online: Don’t Break the Internet

posted by Stanford Law Review

The Stanford Law Review Online has just published a piece by Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post on the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. In Don’t Break the Internet, they argue that the two bills — intended to counter online copyright and trademark infringement — “share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet’s addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet’s extraordinary growth, and for free expression.”

They write:

These bills, and the enforcement philosophy that underlies them, represent a dramatic retreat from this country’s tradition of leadership in supporting the free exchange of information and ideas on the Internet. At a time when many foreign governments have dramatically stepped up their efforts to censor Internet communications, these bills would incorporate into U.S. law a principle more closely associated with those repressive regimes: a right to insist on the removal of content from the global Internet, regardless of where it may have originated or be located, in service of the exigencies of domestic law.

Read the full article, Don’t Break the Internet by Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post, at the Stanford Law Review Online.

Note: Corrected typo in first paragraph.

  December 19, 2011 at 3:14 am  Tags: banks, credit card companies, DNS, DNS filtering, domain name seizures, domain name servers, domain names, financial institutions, Intellectual Property, Internet, internet security, internet stability, IP, IP addresses, IP rights, online advertisers, PROTECT IP Act, search engine censorship, search engines, SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, World Wide Web  Posted in: Current Events, Cyberlaw, First Amendment, Google & Search Engines, Google and Search Engines, Innovation, Intellectual Property, International & Comparative Law, Law Rev (Stanford), Law School (Law Reviews), Movies & Television, Property Law, Social Network Websites   Print This Post   One Comment

Post-Soviet Russia: Just Like 15th Century England?

posted by Jeffrey Kahn

Yesterday I noted that I would blog a bit this month about the rule of law in Russia.  Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a front-page feature article by Guy Chazan that offers a rare look into the world of Russia’s oligarchs.  I’m interested in the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, now its most famous prisoner.  Chazan’s story focuses on two more oligarchs: Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich.

The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a decade in which vast fortunes could be made in the chaos of the new Russia.  These men (and they were all men) built empires from scratch on unstable legal foundations in the rubble of post-Soviet society.  The strength or permanence of the law didn’t matter much to the oligarchs; indeed, they relied on its weakness to amass their wealth.

Now that those empires need protecting, however, it is to law that the oligarchs turn.  Berezovsky, once the éminence grise behind Boris Yeltsin, now lives in luxurious self-imposed exile in London.  The WSJ reports that he is worth about $750 million.  Abramovich owns the Chelsea Football Club and the world’s largest yacht; his worth is estimated at about $16.5 billion.  Berezovsky has sued Abramovich for $6 billion, alleging that the latter violated oral agreements about various oil and metal companies in Russia.  Berezovsky claims he left his stake in them in Abramovich’s hands after he fled to London to escape the wrath of then President Vladimir Putin.

According to Abramovich’s attorney, Jonathan Sumption, there is nothing to this claim.  The dispute arose, he says, in a “society without law,” and the deal the two men made was itself “corrupt.”  That might seem like a strange legal defense but, as Sumption continued, “the reality was that that was how business was done in Russia at the time.” 

The case is being heard at London’s High Court.  To help the judge understand the millieu in which the oligarchs did business, Sumption told the court: “In our own national experience, we have to go back to the 15th century to find anything remotely comparable.” 

Maybe.  But the average Russian citizen observing this legal squabble might note that 15th century England had something that 21st century Russia lacks: Robin Hood.

  November 7, 2011 at 11:16 pm   Posted in: Corruption, Courts, Current Events, International & Comparative Law, Uncategorized   Print This Post   No Comments

The Importance of Sustained Dialogue

posted by Danielle Citron

In an important post on the UK based blog “Insight on Conflict,” former US Ambassador to the UN and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, together with two leaders in peacebuilding NGOs (Melanie Greenberg, President and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding and Derek Brown, Executive Director of the Peace Appeal Foundation) highlight the importance of genuine, sustained and supported dialogue to peacebuilding efforts globally.  While the blog celebrates the three distinguished recipients of Friday’s Nobel Peace prize, it also calls attention to the difficulties to current legal contraints to this work in the US, which last year’s decision of the Supreme Court’s in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project made all the more cumbersome in creating obstacles for individuals and institutions involved in peace building work. This is an important issue that should get more attention.

  October 12, 2011 at 4:10 pm   Posted in: Constitutional Law, Current Events, International & Comparative Law   Print This Post   No Comments

Our Exceptional Constitution

posted by Timothy Zick

Scholars have long debated the extent to which the U.S. Constitution has influenced constitution-making and constitutional interpretation abroad.  David Law (Washington University) and Mila Versteeg (Virginia) have recently posted an interesting empirical study of the extraterritorial influence of the U.S. Constitution, entitled “The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution.”   I recommend it to anyone interested in comparative constitutionalism and formal constitutional modeling.  

As the title suggests, the authors conclude that in recent decades (particularly since the 1990s), other nations have become increasingly unlikely to model their rights-related (or structural) constitutional provisions on the U.S. Constitution.  Their study, which is based on 60 years of data, offers a systematic analysis of the declining influence of U.S. constitutionalism abroad.  With regard to rights in particular, the authors conclude that the U.S. Constitution is increasingly far from the global mainstream, both in the sense that it contains provisions not found in most constitutions (i.e., a right to bear arms, a formal separation of church and state) and in the sense that its Bill of Rights does not contain what the authors refer to as a developing “generic component” of constitutional rights (the existence of which casts some doubt on the notion that constitutions are strongly expressive instruments).  Lack of formal modeling is only one datum concerning the declining influence of the Bill of Rights.  Many commentators have argued that the Supreme Court’s reluctance to cite or rely upon foreign legal and constitutional sources may be diminishing the global influence and appeal of American constitutional jurisprudence and norms.  

Insofar as countries still look to the U.S. as an example, Law and Versteeg conclude that it is likely not to imitate but rather to avoid the Constitution’s perceived flaws.  Although there is no emergent global model, the authors conclude that at least with respect to nations sharing an Anglo-American legal tradition, Canada’s constitution has become far more influential than the U.S. Constitution.  The causes for the decline of U.S. constitutionalism are varied.  The authors point to several possible factors, including the rise of a superior model, a “general decline of American hegemony,” “judicial parochialism,” the “obsolescence” of the U.S. Constitution, and America’s exceptionalist creed.   

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  October 10, 2011 at 10:09 am   Posted in: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, First Amendment, International & Comparative Law   Print This Post   14 Comments

The PRC Celebrates Its 62nd Birthday

posted by Margaret Lewis

Seeing as I spend a great deal of time thinking, talking, and writing about China, it seems fitting that my first day guest blogging coincides with the National Day of the People’s Republic of China. The celebration got off to an early start with the launch of China’s first space lab module, called Heavenly Palace No. 1 (discussed here on New Yorker correspondent Evan Osnos’s excellent blog). Today, the festivities turned to Beijing where the leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) are celebrating 62 years of uninterrupted rule. As election season heats up here in the United States, the DNC and RNC understandably could be envious at the prospect of not having to deal with a multi-party system.

Although CPC rule has been consistent over six decades, the experience of the individual leaders in Zhongnanhai (the headquarters near Tiananmen Square in Beijing) has been much more complicated as they jockey for power behind the scenes. The public face is one of orderly transition on a periodic basis, as seen in the handing of power from the third-generation leaders (led by Jiang Zemin) to fourth-generation leaders in the early 2000s (led by Hu Jintao) and, as currently playing out, to the fifth-generation leaders. As was on display today, in public, the top guys (and they are all still guys) wear the same suits and even have near identical haircuts and hair-dye. Yet much speculation is afoot about the future composition of and hierarchy within the Politburo and, at the pinnacle of power, the Politburo Standing Committee.

Xi Jinping is the overwhelming frontrunner for the top post, with Li Keqiang looking to be in the number two spot. Interestingly, Li was one of the first students to study law at Peking University after schools reopened following the end of the Cultural Revolution. Li was never a practicing lawyer, but even having studied law sets him apart as unusual in China’s leadership. There’s been little indication that Li will be a champion of legal reforms once the leadership transition is complete. Nonetheless, his ascent raises questions whether people with legal backgrounds are poised to take a more conspicuous role in the Party/government.

 

  October 1, 2011 at 6:53 pm  Tags: china, communist party, national day  Posted in: Current Events, International & Comparative Law   Print This Post   No Comments

Super on Egypt and the Need for the U.S. to Use its Leverage to Secure Democracy

posted by Danielle Citron

In a follow up to earlier commentary, Professor David Super has an insightful and important editorial in the Los Angeles Times entitled Time for the U.S. to Use its Leverage with Egypt.  As Super explains, the Egyptian revolution is not a one-act play–indeed, its fate is uncertain and the U.S. can and must play a crucial role in securing democracy by telling the new ruling generals that further crackdowns on peaceful demonstrators will bring an immediate interruption in all aid.  See the editorial below the fold. Read the rest of this post »

  September 9, 2011 at 5:58 pm   Posted in: Current Events, International & Comparative Law   Print This Post   No Comments

What is a treaty? Is that the right question?

posted by Matthew Lister

(Thanks to Danielle and the Co-Op crowed for letting me stick around a bit longer.)

I am interested in how we should think about treaties.  More specifically, I am interested in different ways we might think about treaties, and why different ways might be appropriate in different circumstances.  At one extreme we might think of treaties as establishing sacred duties, as being based on oaths with deep religious implications.  (Jeremy Waldon has a very interesting discussion of the history of this idea in his recent Charles E. Test lectures, “A Religious View of the Foundations of International Law”.)  I think that there’s a case to be made that supposed principle of international law (or of natural law, depending on one’s account), pacta sunt servanda, depends on this understanding, though I won’t try to make that case here.  (If so, this would be interesting in light of fact that Hans Kelsen at one point held, I believe, pacta sunt servanda to be the “basic norm” of international law, though he later abandoned this.) Read the rest of this post »

  September 8, 2011 at 6:02 am   Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, History of Law, International & Comparative Law, Jurisprudence, Legal Theory, Trade, Uncategorized   Print This Post   4 Comments

Critical Jewish Studies?

posted by David Schraub

The first two areas I could say I had an actual scholarly interest in were Church/State law and Critical Race Theory. This wasn’t an accident — I got interest in CRT because the method of analysis it used really spoke to me as a Jew. It seemed to do a better job of capturing the various problems and barriers faced by members of marginalized groups beyond the standard, thin liberal story.

When I finally got access to Lexis as an undergraduate at Carleton, one of the first things I did was run a search for something approximating a “Critical Jewish Theory”. And I came up with … virtually nothing. With one very notable exception — Stephen Feldman at the University of Wyoming (I know, I know: Jewish studies in Wyoming — could it get any more cliched?) — it was a virtual dead-end. Even Professor Feldman’s work, which I admire and has influenced me greatly, focuses primarily on the American Church/State context. An important topic, to be sure, but hardly the only one which intersects with Jewish lives and areas of concern (international law, in particular, seems like a gimme).

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  August 12, 2011 at 12:30 am   Posted in: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, International & Comparative Law, Race, Religion, Uncategorized   Print This Post   7 Comments

One Hundred Years Later . . .

posted by Gerard Magliocca

Before I get into the substance of this post, I should mention that I’ve finished Chapter Two of Bingham book, which brings the story up to 1840.  Hopefully I’ll have Chapter 3 (of 12) done next month.

2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the Parliament Act in the UK, which stripped the House of Lords of its power to block permanently a bill passed by the House of Commons.  One interesting facet of this Act is it was intended as a temporary solution until the House of Lords could be reformed.  Here’s what the Preamble of the Act says:

“[W]hereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot immediately be brought into operation:

And whereas provision will require hereafter to be made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitution for limiting and defining the powers of the new Second Chamber, but it is expedient to make such provision as in this Act appears for restricting the existing powers of the House of Lords.”

The charm of the British Constitution is in its gradualism, but this may be taking things too far.

  July 25, 2011 at 5:00 pm   Posted in: International & Comparative Law   Print This Post   No Comments

Tsunami and “natural rights” in property

posted by Andrew Sutter

תַּחַת כָּל-הַשָּׁמַיִם לִי-הוּא
– Iyov 41:3 (Tanakh)

Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is Mine.
– Job 41:11 (Authorized Version)

It’s said that the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755 had a profound effect on the thought of Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and others. Having occurred so far from Western intellectual centers, the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami and the 2011 Japan tsunami are unlikely to be so influential. The first fits easily into the discourse of “underdevelopment,” and evokes our pity. The second occurred in a country more “like us” in many ways, but was soon overshadowed by just one of its effects, a so-called nuclear “catastrophe” that fits easily into the discourse of energy politics and money, and that resonates with our bi-polar attitude toward technology.

While I can’t speak to the 2004 tsunami, I did spend time earlier this month investigating the impact of the Japanese tragedy first-hand. Obviously, the effects of seeing one erased town or neighborhood after another, in three dimensions and 360 degrees, and of smelling them, and of sneezing or choking on their dust, were more than intellectual. But an unavoidable by-product of the experience is that it’s hard not to think some of our cherished intellectual positions are vain, self-serving and simply wrong. And among them, our notions of property.
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  May 23, 2011 at 4:29 am   Posted in: Current Events, International & Comparative Law, Jurisprudence, Property Law   Print This Post   9 Comments

Accounting for Power

posted by Andrew Sutter

Recent revelations in Japan suggest just how important an understanding of accounting may be.

In a post in late March, I related that many Japanese were willing to give the benefit of the doubt to TEPCO, the operator of the damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, in the days following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The most common excuse in the language, “Shikata ga nai” (“It can’t be helped”), struck most people as apposite, given the historical rarity of 9.0 earthquakes and 15-meter killer waves.

By now, the situation has almost been integrated into the everyday, at least for those of us far from the reactor. People speculate whether the government nuclear agency’s lead spokesperson is wearing a wig, and a cable news channel has a daily segment, “Kyou no genpatsu kiiwaado” – “Today’s nuke reactor keyword”. Any goodwill toward TEPCO has long since evaporated, thanks to its management’s sloth in apologizing, its spokespersons’ frequent misstatements and evasions in daily press conferences, and sympathy for the thousands displaced from the evacuation zone, their livelihoods derailed (and their pets and livestock reluctantly left behind to starve, an aspect of the story that has mobilized many activists here). But it turns out that even the initial goodwill was probably misplaced.
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  May 9, 2011 at 10:24 am   Posted in: Accounting, Administrative Law, Current Events, Environmental Law, International & Comparative Law   Print This Post   2 Comments

Frum/Greenwald on International Law

posted by Dave Hoffman

On Bloggingheads, David Frum and Glenn Greenwald talked about the role of law in mediating international relations (sparked by the OBL killing).  I thought it was pretty decent stuff.  You might too:

  May 6, 2011 at 2:16 pm   Posted in: International & Comparative Law   Print This Post   No Comments

Thoughts on an Earthquake: Narratives and Governance

posted by Andrew Sutter

[Attorney and journalist Andrew J. Sutter is the only foreign member of the Iwate Prefecture Bar Association. He lives most of the year in central Tokyo. We've invited him to give his perspective on recent events in Japan. --FP]

There’s been a joke making the rounds of Tokyo during the past week or so: The government announces in the morning that there could be a sudden blackout sometime by early evening, since power capacity is down and the demand is already very near to capacity. In America, the blackout happens, and stores get looted. In China, the blackout happens and no one notices, since they’re already a common occurrence. In France the blackout happens, and people start to make love. In Germany the blackout happens, and no one cares, because everyone has solar power. In Japan, millions of Japanese conscientiously reduce power consumption, so the blackout is avoided – and then people are pissed off because the blackout didn’t happen as announced.

Aside from showing the gentleness of the Japanese sense of satire, it’s a true story, based on events in Tokyo exactly one week after the Touhoku (northeastern Japan) earthquake. The joke arrived on my wife’s cell phone about an hour or two after officials rescinded the warning.

The joke also shows a certain trust in the government and in the reliability of its pronouncements. More about this below the fold.
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  March 28, 2011 at 9:05 pm   Posted in: International & Comparative Law, Law and Humanities   Print This Post   13 Comments

The Other Bush Doctrine

posted by David Gray

As someone who thinks and writes about transitional justice issues, I have been far more interested in recent events in Sudan than those in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan (more on this in later posts), but that doesn’t mean I have not been watching in wonder and admiration the events unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East.  I think we all have; and those are easy intellectual emotions to justify.  What I have been more conflicted about is whether it is also appropriate for us to feel a bit of pride.  I think it is, but not for the reasons many conservatives have been trumpeting. 

More after the jump.

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  March 4, 2011 at 7:02 pm   Posted in: International & Comparative Law, Politics   Print This Post   3 Comments

UCLA Law Review Vol. 58, Issue 3 (February 2011)

posted by UCLA Law Review

Volume 58, Issue 3 (February 2011)

Articles

Good Faith and Law Evasion	Samuel W. Buell	611
Making Sovereigns Indispensable: Pimentel and the Evolution of Rule 19	Katherine Florey	667
The Need for a Research Culture in the Forensic Sciences	Jennifer L. Mnookin et al.	725
Commentary on The Need for a Research Culture in the Forensic Sciences	Joseph P. Bono	781
Commentary on The Need for a Research Culture in the Forensic Sciences	Judge Nancy Gertner	789
Commentary on The Need for a Research Culture in the Forensic Sciences	Pierre Margot	795

Comments

What’s Your Position? Amending the Bankruptcy Disclosure Rules to Keep Pace With Financial Innovation	Samuel M. Kidder	803
Defendant Class Actions and Patent Infringement Litigation	Matthew K. K. Sumida	843

  February 25, 2011 at 1:19 pm   Posted in: Bankruptcy, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Courts, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Current Events, Economic Analysis of Law, Empirical Analysis of Law, Evidence Law, History of Law, Indian Law, Intellectual Property, International & Comparative Law, Jurisprudence, Law and Humanities, Law and Inequality, Law and Psychology, Law Practice, Law Rev (UCLA), Psychology and Behavior, Race, Sociology of Law, Supreme Court   Print This Post   No Comments

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