Transnational Law Blog: International Law

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International Law

Transnational Law Blog

Studies law regulating actions or events transcending national frontiers.
By John Dermody, Travis Hodgkins, and Nema Milaninia

Post Frequency: 7.4/day

Last Entry: November 18, 2009 at 15:57:50

Behind President Obama?s Warning of ?Double Dip? Danger

Posted on November 18, 2009
Today, in an interview with Fox News in Beijing, President Obama warned that ?the US economy could head into a ?double-dip recession? unless urgent steps were taken to rein back America?s mounting level of public debt,? reported the Financial Times. Speculation about a double dipping, also known as W shape economy, has been on going among academics ever since the US economy showed signs of recovery...

Sri Lanka and Trade Policy: Concession or Sanction?

Posted on October 26, 2009
The European Union last week produced an official notice derived from its year-long investigation on human right violation in Sri Lanka. Here are the Commission's final report, and the independent expert's report. Given the Commission's conclusion that Sri Lankan government breached its human rights commitments during it 25-year civil war with the Tamil Tiger, the country is set to loose its trade concessions, known as GSP Plus, to the European Union, a sanction which will cost the country more than $100m trade benefits...

New Wave of Insider Trading Charges as Judge Approved Wiretaps for White Collar Crime Investigation

Posted on October 21, 2009
It?s all over the news, and I should not be caught by surprise. Yet here I am becoming very disturbed by the loopholes in our financial institutions, which gave rise to an unprecedented amount of white collar crime - from Bernard Madoff to Raj Rajaratnam...

America's Third Nobel Peace Prize In A Decade

Posted on October 09, 2009
At 4am, the news that president Obama received the Nobel peace prize came to me just as unexpected at it was for all of us. However, as the dust settled, and president Obama finally responded with his speech in the White House's rose garden saying that the prize is "an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations"...

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A Proposed Solution for California Budget Crisis

Posted on September 10, 2009
People pointed to California's divided government and the supermajority law, which requires the legislature to adopt a budget with a two-third vote as reasons that cause the ongoing budget crisis in the Golden State over the last decade. The budget, which was passed by Arnold Schwarzenegger on July 24 of this year was said to virtually guarantee another fiscal crisis next year despite the fact that it comprises $15 billion in service cuts, including $8...

The Case Of Ben Bernanke

Posted on August 31, 2009
Last week, most news applauded Obama?s reappointment of Ben Bernanke as the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Of the few commentators who opposed the reappointment, Morgan Stanley Asia's Stephen Roach lists three critical mistakes that Bernanke made leading toward the financial crisis...

Sheehan is out of Retirement

Posted on August 28, 2009
I've talked about Cindy Sheehan before and was under the impression she had given up her war protest. I'm glad to read that Sheehan has once again taken up her charge and is dogging Obama while he is on vacation. The Breit Bart put it as follows: After spending weeks dogging George W...

Posner v. Macroeconomists

Posted on August 23, 2009
This week brings a heated debate between Judge Posner and some prominent economists including Brad DeLong of UC Berkeley. The debate comes at the heart of my recent discussion with a lawyer who is also a faithful follower of Paul Krugman blog. I argued that certain opinions made by Paul Krugman are so political that readers should distinguish them from his academic accomplishment...

The Transnational Law School

Posted on August 23, 2009
Much to my surprise and fascination, Peking University ("Bei Da") opened a School of Transnational Law in the Fall of 2008 that has a curriculum nearly identical to that of a U.S. juris doctor (JD) program and requires three years of study. Even more amazing is that the school is seeking ABA accreditation, the first law school outside of the U...

Trapped in the Middle-Income Class, Malaysia Is Finding Its Way Out

Posted on August 04, 2009
Once considered one of the Asian dragons, foreign investors have largely forgot Malaysia in the decade following the 1998 Asian financial crisis. However, there have been some important recent reforms in business law in Malaysia as the government of Najib Razak finds ways to push its liberalization agenda further in order to attract more foreign capital in the form of market exchange and direct investment...

Do You Really Own That E-Book?

Posted on July 27, 2009
"Control At A Distance" is a very interesting article over at Balkinization about Amazon.com using the internet to delete copies of George Orwell's books 1984 and Animal Farm from various people's Kindles after learning that the publisher did not want to grant the rights to Kindle...

In the Darkening Danger of California Budget Crisis

Posted on June 10, 2009
A few days ago, I received some updated news from our Chancellor at UC Hastings regarding Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger?s proposal to cut 100% state funding for the law school. With $24 billion deficit, the governor was searching for further cuts to make up the remaining $5...

As the Dong Falls, Vietnam Faces a Harder Test at the Time of Global Crisis

Posted on June 07, 2009
The Financial Times recently reported that the Vietnam's dong is depreciating steadily as budget deficit and account imbalance grows with "chronic current account deficit that reached $8.4bn, or 9.3 per cent of gross domestic product, in 2008". Vietnamese government is facing the threat of not gathering enough money for its $80bn fiscal stimulus package as bonds and other commercial tools are falling flat...

China's Rising Power and the Hope for a Multi-Polar World

Posted on May 10, 2009
Recently David Pilling of the Financial Times published a thought-provoking article under the title: ?Asia Pays Tribute to Its New Superpower,? which discusses how the rise of China during the time of economic crisis has been perceived within the region and beyond...

An American Life Story

Posted on May 03, 2009
The Washington Post today offers a heartfelt portrait of Justice Souter that invokes much of my admiration and inspiration for the Superior Court Judge- a simple life fills with unwavering public service and modesty. Justice Souter recently announced his retirement from the Highest Court leaving this June when the Court will recess for the year...

Reaching Out to Sri Lanka

Posted on May 01, 2009
I have been regularly following up with the news from Sri Lanka. Images and news from this civil war brought me solemn concern and uneasiness. Here in London, I caught this scene one weekend early this month. A sense of helplessness arrived soon after I stepped deep into the scene seeing men, children, elders and women yelling out loud their urging need and asking for international intervention...

Over the Worst Yet, Japan?

Posted on April 30, 2009
We don't know for sure, but at least Japan is showing signs of stabilization. Despite growing deflation and addition contraction at 3.3% this year, the Financial Times today reported some stabilizing signs from the second largest economy in the world giving hope that the worst of the recession may be almost over...

Global Internet Rights and Censorship

Posted on March 28, 2009
The Internet has changed the way information is spread around the world. Internet usage has become ubiquitous in developed countries and it is still growing in less developed countries. The ability of populations to get information through the Internet is treated differently by various countries...

Federal and California State Tax: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Posted on March 25, 2009
If you would like to find out the tax aspects of Obama's stimulus package which seizes about 36% of the stimulus, as well as how the State of California mends its budget crisis through various tax increases, there was a recent discussion on federal and state tax issues given by professor Heather Field and professor Darien Shanske, two respected tax professors at UC Hastings...

Economic Advice From Jim Rogers

Posted on March 21, 2009

Rethinking the Washington Consensus on Trade Liberalization

Posted on March 17, 2009
"?Stabilize, privatize, and liberalize? became the mantra of a generation of technocrats who cut their teeth in the developing world and of the political leaders they counseled"- Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University Across legal economic disciplines, there have been many arguments regarding the benefits of free trade on developing countries...

Saving the Dragon

Posted on March 07, 2009
In the process of learning about China?s economic development, I often wonder if it was the right policy for China to cut its domestic spending on public services to suppress its currency while exporting most of its capital surplus to the West. Even in pure economic term, shouldn't economic growth equivalent with improvement of social welfare and income distribution? The answer is obvious- there is no promise of such upgrading even in an economy that has been growing at a rapid rate like China...

On Law and Facebook

Posted on March 04, 2009

How Would Karl Marx Respond to Our Global Credit Crisis?

Posted on February 26, 2009
Having born and brought up in a communist country as well as reading Marxism over the years in both social and economic disciplines, I can?t help asking myself the question: ?How would Marx respond to this financial crisis?? The question lingered for weeks...

A Response to the Hysteria about Modernizing American Health Care

Posted on February 19, 2009
Some commentators have been ringing the alarm bells about the health care provisions in the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (The Stimulus). As I discussed in a previous post, this started with an opinion piece in Bloomberg, which has since been discredited by CNN and others...

Three is Company: How Obama is Coming Between You and Your Doctor

Posted on February 16, 2009
Obama will sign the Stimulus Bill tomorrow and take his first small step toward socialized healthcare and one giant leap toward socializing America. A previous post on TLB warned against blindly listening to Right-Wing Talking Points, but it should be noted that the right-wing talking points are not off the mark in this instance...

Back To The Same Starting Point

Posted on February 15, 2009
It is that time of my life once again, where I return to my root and start working on Vietnam's economic reform. Not that I have never attempted to run away from this subject to gain more breadth on other regions. Yet, this time I found myself coming back to that same initial starting point from my undergraduate years to look closer into Vietnam?s economic performance and its shortcomings...

Beware of Right-Wing Talking Points

Posted on February 12, 2009
While I fully support efforts to keep an eye on what is in the massive Stimulus Bill, there is a new lie coming out of the right-wing echo chamber about a electronic medical record-keeping provision that has made it into usually reliable news outlets like Bloomberg, as highlighted in a recent post on this blog...

Obama is Bush in Sheep's Clothing - Do You See it Yet?

Posted on February 11, 2009
It wasn't GTMO or the promise to bring troops home from Iraq and send them right back to Afghanistan that made it clear. It was simply the Obama fear factor. The reason for rushing the stimulus package is "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe...

Legal Barriers to Responding to the Global Economic Crisis

Posted on February 08, 2009
As the global economic slowdown worsens, the world?s major economic powers seem to agree that the key to fixing things (or lessen the damage) is massive spending. At the time of this post, at least thirty-four countries have announced ambitious stimulus plans...

Summer Opportunities for 1L Student Abroad

Posted on January 29, 2009
When I arrived in Hong Kong in July last year for the Duke Summer Abroad Program at Hong Kong University, I was surprised to find that many Duke students had already finished a summer internship with law firms either in Japan, Korea or China prior to their arrival in Hong Kong...

Thinking Through the Year of the Earth Ox

Posted on January 27, 2009
Harvard's political economist, Dani Rodrick, recently posted some new thoughts regarding 2009. In his entry named "Looking Forward To 2009", Rodrick detailed four major determinative tickets that may make the world better or worse in the upcoming year: 1...

What Is More?

Posted on January 25, 2009
If you have not given up on following distressing news from the credit crisis, George Soros (a well respected Wall Street guru) recently published his analysis regarding our government's options on bailing out the banks. After watching Paulson helplessly aggravated the situation on his first round of spending the Tarp money, Soros sees that our leader has two options: (1) nationalizing the banks or (2) buying out the toxic assets and leave the banks to the market force...

This Blogger Needs a Brief Hiatus

Posted on May 27, 2008
The time has come for me to take a break from the blogging world and focus my attention on preparing for the California Bar exam. It has been a pleasure blogging throughout my law school tenure, and I look forward to returning after I take the Bar exam in July...

I Want a Certificate in Space Law, Too!

Posted on May 13, 2008
As I am coming out of finals, graduating from law school, and staring the Bar exam dead in the eye, I am fascinated by this article on Res Communis about the first law student to graduate with a specialty in space law. It should come as no surprise that I'm planning a career in transnational law but I take my hat off to anyone that is planning a career in space law-- that is just too international and out-of-this-world cool! I'll admit it, I'm jealous! The University of Mississippi Law School is the only ABA-accredited law school in the nation...

Factory in China Accidentally Makes Free Tibet Flags

Posted on April 28, 2008
A factory in China has been manufacturing 'Free Tibet' flags (h/t Foreign Passport Blog). According to the BBC, the factory owner said the flags were ordered from outside China, and he did not know the flags were a symbol for a free Tibet. The flags are known as the Snow Lion Flag and they have been banned in China...

Thinking of China's Loyal Youth

Posted on April 16, 2008
An editorial by Matthew Forney, former Beijing bureau chief for Time, entitled, China's Loyal Youth, explores some of the reasons why most young Chinese support their government's recent suppression of the Tibetan uprising. Forney's assessment of the next generation of Chinese-- those 30 years of age and under-- is interesting because it gives a cursory look at the future policy makers, lawyers, and businesspeople of the fastest growing economy in the world...

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum

Posted on April 13, 2008
An article at IntLawGrrls entitled, The Jolly Roger Still Flies, reminds us that piracy is still a very lucrative business-- I don't mean piracy in the intellectual property sense of the word-- I mean REAL pirates! Here is a piece of the article: ...[T]oday?s pirates seem to have gone largely unmentioned in the mainstream press, despite their having taken some 3200 sailors hostage over the last 10 years, which they?ve ransomed for millions of dollars (paid by the shipowners)...

The U.S. Military's Contemplated Use of the Blogosphere

Posted on April 08, 2008
While I was perusing the blogosphere about a week ago, I came across a post on Opinio Juris that caught my attention entitled, US Military Thought About Recruiting-- or Hiring-- Bloggers, which discusses a 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University that suggests using bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message...

Seeing The Tibet Situation Clearly: Old Tibet and Democracy for a Future Tibet

Posted on April 03, 2008
There is always two sides to every story and the same is true about the unrest in Tibet. The state operated Xinhua News issued an editorial today entitled, Don't See Tibet Through Tainted Glasses, which argues that Tibet is better now than it was before it came under the control of China...

Comparing the Current Account Balances of the U.S. and China

Posted on April 01, 2008
The Crashing Down Now blog has a post entitled, The U.S. Account Balance?, which discussed the CIA World Factbook rank order of each country's current account balance. I've never even heard of a country's current account balance, and so I was surprised to learn that the U...

AFRC Appeal: Joint Criminal Enterprise

Posted on March 27, 2008
This is the second in a series that will post excerpts from the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council Appeal Judgment from the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The section concerns Joint Criminal Enterprise, a mode of liability that is somewhat akin to conspiracy...

Medellin v. Texas: ICJ decision creates an international obligation, but not domestic law

Posted on March 25, 2008
This morning?s decision in Medellin v. Texas is the culmination of a long line of cases, both at the ICJ and at the Supreme Court, that have attempted to determine the effect that an ICJ ruling has under U.S. domestic law. In the law review comment I am working on, I have approached this problem from the perspective of trying to doctrinally resolve the Medellin line of cases with the Supreme Court?s decision in Mitsubishi Motors v...

Before you go to the Olympic Games in China

Posted on March 24, 2008
Amid the violent protests in Tibet and the calls for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, the US State Department issued a "fact sheet" regarding the upcoming 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. The fact sheet says that China is generally safe but the "recent violence in Tibet" and a recently "failed attempt to create an explosion on a passenger plane in flight from western China?s Xinjiang Province to Beijing are good examples of how potentially dangerous events can occur in the run-up to the Olympics...

Violence in Tibet Presents China With the Tiananmen Square Dilemma

Posted on March 16, 2008
A few days ago I argued in a previous post that the protests and violence in Tibet could be the first of many Tiananmen Square type incidents that occur throughout China during the months leading up to the Olympics. An article published by the Times Online entitled, Fears of Another Tiananmen as Tibet Explodes in Hatred, corroborated my previous sentiments...

Violent Protests in Tibet Invite Questions About The Chinese Government's Control Over The Country

Posted on March 14, 2008
The violence in Tibet is an indication of the chaos that could result from the Olympics in China. An article by the Christian Science Monitor posits an explanation as to why this years annual protests in Tibet are more volatile than they have been in decades...

A Reason to Have Faith in China's Legal System: The Labor Contract Law

Posted on March 06, 2008
NPR's All Things Considered did a piece recently on the new labor contract law in China. The show barely skimmed the surface of the new law, summarizing it as "a new law requiring businesses to give workers written contracts and pay compensation if they're fired...

AFRC Appeal: Forced Marriage

Posted on March 04, 2008
This entry is the first in a series that will post noteworthy excerpts from the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council Appeal Judgment. Due to space and format constraints I will only post selections from the sections and will omit the references and citations...

AFRC Appeal Judgment

Posted on March 03, 2008
The Appeal Judgment in the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) case was filed and released on March 3. There are a number of sections in the Judgment that I am sure will be of interest, notably, the Joint Criminal Enterprise section and the Forced Marriage section...