Academic

The American Elections and the Perceptions of the Developing World, Part II: India's Jitters, Pakistan's Prize

Posted on November 07, 2008
The American media, like its Western European cousins, would like to have us all believe that the entire world outside of Europe and the United States is not only ecstatic over the election of Mr. Obama to the American presidency, bit will now, like the proverbial lion and lamb, abandon their traditional and current agendas, even their aggressive ones, and play nice with the new American President whose skin color embraces the world...

Fidel Castro on the American Elections: Obama's Partiality and the Perceptions of the Developing World

Posted on November 04, 2008
Sometimes the most trenchant analysis comes from unexpected sources. And so it may be for the American presidential election which is being held this day. As my election day contribution to this great republic, I draw on the perspective of an unusual source, but one whose knowledge of and fascinated antipathy for the American political system might provide more valuable insights, even if only perversely so, than the slew of media sycophants and "players" that tend to dominate the narcissistic and involved Western media...

Military Cooperation Beyond the West: China and India, and Pakistan Lurking

Posted on November 02, 2008
I have written about the increasing confidence of the People's Liberation Army,and the willingness of the Chinese state to permit the PLA to project power well beyond the borders of the People's Republic. See Larry Catá Backer, China?s People?s Liberation Army at 80: Projecting Power and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Law at the End of the Day, August 1, 2007...

Guest Essay: Professor S. Beth Farmer on Competition Law

Posted on October 31, 2008
My colleague, Professor S. Beth Farmer, has recently written an excellent and provocative essay on competition law. Professor Farmer has graciously permitted me to post the essay here. She will present this essay at an important competition law conference, the Korean Competition Law Association--International Conference, held in Seoul, Republic of Korea November 7, 2008...

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China and Its African Problem: Anarchy, Natural Resources and the Congo

Posted on October 30, 2008
China has spent the greater part of the last decade catching up. It has moved aggressively to develop its infrastructure, industry and economic and social institutions. China has begun to project its power abroad. And China has become a great consumer of resources...

Bank Bailout Ball: Using Federal TARP Funds for Acquisition Financing

Posted on October 26, 2008
My reserarch assistant, Sandra Gonzalez del Pilar, has kindly provided a summary of the terms of the bank bailout portion of the federal government's efforts to control the effects fo the current financial crisis. After the enactment of EESA on October 3, 2008 the Bush administration?s implementation of the Troubled Asset Purchase Program (TARP) under EESA has taken a different approach...

A Mania for Pathology: The Science of Behavior and American Governance

Posted on October 25, 2008
Every culture has its own orientation--that framework from which it understands the reality around it, and which serves as a basis for choices about the form of social organization that are constructed from out of it. For some, religion supplies the compass for navigating and organizing reality...

India Enacts a Limited Liability Partnership Bill and Soon a New Company Law in the Wake of a Likely Regulatory Turnaround in the Financial Sector

Posted on October 24, 2008
The Indian Upper House of Parliament has enacted a much studied Limited Liability Partnership Bill (Bill No. CXI of 2006) 2008. The Bill, introduced in 2oo6 in the Rajya Sabha (Parliament of India) was referred to a parliamentary standing committee, whose report was issued last year...

Sovereign Wealth Funds and the Financial Crisis: Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Funds, India, and the Rising Private Power of Public Organizations

Posted on October 23, 2008
We are all well aware of the current financial crisis--a very slow train wreck almost a decade in the making, ignored (and indeed encouraged) by certain elements of the private sector with the collusion of states and now burst well beyond the capacity of any state to contain it...

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in Its Own Words: Complexity, Confusion and Open Questions

Posted on October 15, 2008
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 has been enacted (Public Law No: 110-343 [GPO: Text, PDF]) . . .and in near record time. That, in itself is a wonder, given its girth and complexity. It is hard to believe that the Act represents the frenzied efforts of people in the Administration and Congress over the very short period of time that the economic crisis went from barely a mention to a media orchestrated climax...

Forbidden Cities

Posted on October 15, 2008
This is a spin on an old tale: There is a certain trans-cultural element to architecture of a certain kind. There is certainly what appears to be a universal approach to an architecture to power. That architecture should serve as a lesson to those who tend to like to wield it...

A Short Philosophy of Teaching

Posted on October 08, 2008
I was recently asked about my teaching philosophy. An excellent question. Here is a first attempt at an answer:Guide but not lead, suggest but not compel, challenge but not frustrate, inspire but not indoctrinate, ground in accepted wisdom but not inhibit from individual exploration, provide tools for a lifetime but not ignore the satisfaction of even the smallest steps in learning: these serve as the basic principles of my philosophy of teaching...

(Un?)Intended Regulatory Consequences of the Financial Crisis: Multinational Corporations and Sovereign Wealth Funds

Posted on October 05, 2008
Anyone who does not want to see what is lofty in a man looks that much more keenly for what is low in him and mere foreground--and thus betrays himself.Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: A Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Walter Kaufmann, trans...

Does a Board of Directors Have a Fiduaciary Duty to Honor Contracts Greater than Its Duty to Its Shareholders

Posted on October 04, 2008
The current financial crisis is likely to produce new law in a number of areas. One of the more interesting in these legal eddies may remake the understanding of fiduciary duty in the United States. That is certainly what might happen if Citigroup Inc...

Monkey See, Monkey Do: The European Union and the Financial Crisis

Posted on October 02, 2008
As the United States lurches toward a "solution" to its financial crises, it merits a moment to remember that the crisis is beginning to affect Europe as well. Like the Americans, the Europeans appear prepared to throw money at the problem--that is to throw money at those responsible for the problem, in the hoes that they might fill the rest of us with the confidence to forget and forgive the incompetence and miscalculation of those who helped bring this crisis about...

The Financial Crisis--Boom Days for the Market for Academic Theorizing

Posted on September 25, 2008
The present financial crisis has gotten everyone energized--from the political, to the media to the economic sectors--everyone seems to believe that this is the point of instability in which might be seized for advantage at home or abroad. Academics too sense the upside potential of participating in this market...

Jiyo to Hanei no Ko: Japan's New Prime Minister Taro Aso

Posted on September 24, 2008
The conservative turn in Japanese politics continues unabated. In a mockery of the American obsession with youth, and the American media's criticism of one of the current crop of presidential contenders for having survived to seventy two, sixty eight year old Taro Aso was elevated to the post of Prime Minister of Japan...

Corporate Global Citizenship

Posted on September 20, 2008
I recently had the privilege of reading an advance copy of a working paper written by Grahame Thompson, to appear as a Copenhagen Business School Working Paper. The following are some observations generated from the insights developed in that paper.The convergence of public and private law has emerged as one of the great legal issues of the 21st century...

From Cuba to the United States: Santería and the Construction of Religious Liberty in the United States, the Untold Story

Posted on September 16, 2008
This is the untold story of the way in which the religion of Cuban slaves, forged within the crucible of Spanish intiolerance and cultural marginalization in the homeland, played a critical role in the evolution of the protection of religious liberty in the United States...

AIG and American Corporatist Socialism

Posted on September 16, 2008
By now the dust has settled on the "salvation" of the corporation American International Group, AIG, the multinational insurance giant through the last minute intervention of the American government, which generously opened its coffers for the benefit of this private multinational entity...

"¡Váyanse al carajo, yanquis de mierda": ALBA Grows, Free Trade Reactionism and American Ideological Politics Beyond Globalization

Posted on September 12, 2008
ALBA, the command economy alternative to the free trade model of globalization, has acquired a new member--Honduras. According to the Cuban press, "The ALBA (Spanish acronyms meaning DAWN) was launched by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and supported by Cuba as an alternative to the failed US-led Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)...

Democracy Part XV: In Which Elections Serve as a Prelude to Carving Power in Democractic States

Posted on September 08, 2008
Elections in some democratic states appear to be a prelude to real political change than its marker. In some states, elections are meant to substitute or amplify the para military campaigns among and between political followers that tend to serve as the real field on which elections are determined...

Brazil, China, Sugar, Ethanol and Politics

Posted on September 04, 2008
It is with some interest that I note the recent trade mission sent by Brazil to China. The mission was potentially important enough to earn a notice by petroleum interests. See China wants Brazilian technology in ethanol, Brazil-Arab News Agency, July 8, 2008 (Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum)...

Democracy Part XIV: Of Political Corpses and Global Vampires

Posted on September 02, 2008
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has described his Georgian counterpart as a "political corpse", saying Moscow does not recognise him as president. "President Saakashvili no longer exists in our eyes. He is a political corpse," he told Italy's Rai television...

Russia and the New Medievalism in the International Law of States

Posted on September 01, 2008
A short reverie on Labor Day on the labor of nations:Today we are informed that "European Union leaders have agreed to suspend talks on a new partnership agreement with Moscow until Russian troops have withdrawn from Georgia." EU Suspend Talks on Russia Pact, BBC News Online, September 1, 2008...

End and Goal: On Reports of Corruption in China From a Domestic and Foreign Perspective

Posted on August 28, 2008
Corruption is a terrible thing. It is inefficient. At its core it represents a personal diversion of wealth from the principals of the state (its citizens) to individuals (those who are the beneficiaries of corruption). It serves as a fraud and a misuse of power...

Sovereign Wealth Funds: A Smattering of Opinions that Count But Perhaps Ought Not

Posted on August 22, 2008
I have suggested that Sovereign wealth Funds represent a critical nexus point for the convergence of public and private law. Larry Catá Backer, The Private Law of Public Law: Public Authorities as Shareholders, Golden Shares, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and the Public Law Element in Private Choice of Law...

International Law or Principles of Convenience--On the Transfer of Control of Bakassi to the Cameroons

Posted on August 14, 2008
Western international law theorists make of the notion that the world has moved beyond ethnos as an ordering principle of the constitution of nation states. Since the disastrous flirting with the concept in 19th and early 20th century Europe, the idea that for every ethnos there must be a state has given way to a pluralistic view of demos (embracing the inhabitants of a state with political rights) based on the privileging of values and characteristics of membership in a polity...

On the Cuban View of the Russian Invasion of Ossetia/Georgia

Posted on August 11, 2008
XII En el bote iba remando Por el lago seductor, Con el sol que era oro puro Y en el alma más de un sol. Y a mis pies vi de repente, Ofendido del hedor Un pez muerto, un pez hediondo En el bote remadorJosé Martí Versos Sencillos (1891)...

On the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies: A Contrast in Self Image

Posted on August 08, 2008
The opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, was set for a most propitious time in Chinese numerology (8-8-08). See Olympic Number Symbolism: Eights Across the Boards, Britannica Blog August 8, 2008. It was certainly beautiful and impressive. See Beijing Games Opening Ceremonies, Sports Illustrated, Aug...

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