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US Arrests Former Syrian Prison Chief – But Will the Charges Prove Equal to His Crimes?
No full textSamir Ousman al-Sheikh was about to board a one-way flight from Los Angeles to Beirut when his trip came to a sudden stop. Earlier this month, agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security arrested al-Sheikh, who has been charged with immigration fraud for lying on his visa and U.S. citizenship applications
Brief of Amici Curiae Professors William Araiza, Jeffrey Lubbers, and Peter M. Shane in Support of Defendants\u27 Opposition to Plaintiff\u27s Motion to Stay Effective Date and for Preliminary Injunction
Get PDFAmici are law professors who teach and write in the fields of administrative law and statutory interpretation. Amicus William Araiza is the Stanley A. August Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. Amicus Jeffrey Lubbers is Professor of Practice in Administrative Law at American University, Washington College of Law. Amicus Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law Emeritus at Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law.
Amici have a strong interest in the sound development of administrative law in the federal courts, and are submitting this brief because of the importance of the administrative law and statutory interpretation issues implicated by the plaintiff’s positions. As leading administrative law scholars, amici are well-positioned to provide insights that may assist the Court in evaluating Plaintiff’s arguments concerning both the recently announced major questions doctrine and the nondelegation doctrine
Restructuring Undefined Assets: Valuation of Stablecoins and Their Impact on the Bankruptcy Process
Get PDFDifficulties with defining cryptocurrency have plagued federal agencies and courts since crypto’s creation. With the emergence of “crypto winter” in 2022 that saw many crypto-related ventures fail, bankruptcy courts have been challenged to address numerous novel legal issues surrounding crypto-assets. When looking to the Bankruptcy Code fails to provide answers, courts must look to definitions, agency regulations, and an analysis of cryptocurrency’s position in the market to determine its classification. This can quickly become muddled with the voluminous and seemingly conflicting sources that exist. One such issue emerges when courts attempt to determine how to classify a particular cryptocurrency: is it a commodity or currency? The answer to this question impacts the valuation within a bankruptcy estate and can have a significant effect on the amount a creditor can recover. This Comment analyzes how bankruptcy courts should define tethered cryptoassets, often referred to as stablecoins; it concludes that a commodity definition is more aligned with the function and characteristics of reserve-based stablecoins.
Further, the valuation of crypto-assets is crucial to the stability and feasibility of the proposed reorganization plan. The volatility of stablecoins exemplifies a growing public concern about the practicality of cryptocurrency company reorganization plans. This Comment analyzes the standard of deference courts typically give when approving reorganization plans and recommends the implementation of a higher standard of review for cryptocurrency-related reorganization plans
The Ghost in the Machine: The Threat Screening Center and the Mootness Tool
Get PDFIn FBI v. Fikre, the Supreme Court resolved a circuit split about the voluntary cessation exception to the mootness doctrine in what initially appears to be a plaintiff-friendly way. The Court unanimously held that the government’s “sparse declaration” was insufficient to moot lawsuits challenging the No Fly List (a list of people banned from aircraft). The declaration failed to show that the government “cannot reasonably be expected to do again in the future what it is alleged to have done in the past.” It stated only that Fikre “will not be placed on the No Fly List in the future based on the currently available information.” Justice Gorsuch’s opinion focused exclusively on this not-good-enough declaration. Fikre’s case was not moot, Gorsuch explained, because nothing in that “terse” recital “speaks to whether the government might relist him if he does the same or similar things in the future,” whatever those things might be (the government never disclosed them). Yonas Fikre, who alleges that two FBI agents used the No Fly List to coerce him to be a government informant, and then enabled his detention and torture by agents of a friendly foreign power, fights on./= / \u3e/= / \u3eFikre is fighting long odds. Litigation against the federal government’s Byzantine watchlisting apparatus rarely gets very far, although going nowhere takes a long time. Twenty years after the system’s post-9/11 development, only one lawsuit (out of more than forty) has ever reached trial. That took eight years, a rare exception to the government’s use of mootness as a tool to protect its watchlisting system from exposure through discovery or judicially imposed reforms. If a complaint remains standing after a salvo of motions to dismiss, then mooting the case by asserting that the plaintiff is off the relevant watchlist has routinely been the government’s practice. The Solicitor General’s petition for a writ of certiorari in Fikre’s case sought to protect this useful mootness tool, and thus protect the watchlisting system that it helps shield from scrutiny./= / \u3e/= / \u3eFikre’s victory is illusory (and the government’s loss not so bad) because the Supreme Court’s approach will generate whac-a-mole responses. The government will try out declarations that are incrementally less “sparse” and “terse.” It may remove him and future plaintiffs from one list while quietly retaining them on others. And, additionally or alternatively, it may simply adjust the timing of its watchlisting revelations as it plays more litigation games. Just as Fikre was coming on the horizon, the judge presiding over another watchlisting case bemoaned “what almost seems to be a sick sense of delight the government has taken in withholding from the [plaintiffs] information that is key to the resolution of a jurisdictional question in their case.” Such gamesmanship is the unifying thread that ties all watchlisting cases together. It is also just what an important part of the mootness doctrine is supposed to prevent. Rather than strengthen that doctrine, the Court defanged it./= / \u3e/= / \u3eThis article argues that the Supreme Court’s preoccupation with assessing agency declarations in a vacuum ignores an important element in deciding whether the government’s voluntary cessation should moot a claim. It isn’t just the declaration that should matter, but also the nature of the agency that proffers the declarant. Yet in Justice Gorsuch’s retelling of Fikre’s story, the relevant agencies are ghosts in this watchlisting machine
U\u27wa Indigenous People vs. Columbia: Potential Applications of the Escazu Agreement
Get PDFThough the case is ongoing, and results are still to be seen, it in many ways sets a precedent for indigenous communities in Latin America seeking redress for environmental and cultural injustices. With Colombia’s recent ratification of The Escazú Regional Agreement (the Agreement herein) in 2022, this case presents a unique opportunity for implementation of the Agreement and greater accountability within existing domestic legislation
Interrupting Cyclical Trauma: Transitional Justice in the Philippines
Get PDFTo interrupt the cycles of human rights abuses in the Philippines, the approach to transitional justice must incorporate an understanding of its unique history of abuses. A reliance on both domestic and international justice systems, as well as the promotion of leaders that will build a foundational respect for the rule of law can position the nation to effectuate a more peaceful future
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights Address Obstetric Violence in Rodriguez Pacheco et al. v. Venezuela
Get PDFThe Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) decision on reparations and costs in the case of Rodriguez Pacheco et al. v. Venezuela is one of several that the Court analyzed in recent years relating to women’s obstetric health, indicating a rising interest in the area of reproductive rights
Horizontal Federalism & the Big State Problem
Get PDFCalifornia regulates pork; does it offend the Constitution that pork producers in other states must comply with its regulations if they want to sell Californians pork? In National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, the Supreme Court emerged sharply divided in its approach to the practical extraterritorial spillover effect of the in-state regulations of a tantalizing market. Although a fractured majority of the Court upheld California’s Proposition 12 against a dormant Commerce Clause challenge, at least five Justices registered profound discomfort, with one dissenter expressly inviting consideration of the problem through the lens of other clauses. This Article analyzes “the Big State Problem,” which has existed in one form or another since the founding of our republic. Examining the Court’s treatment of the dormant Commerce Clause and then turning to the Constitution’s self-executing horizontal federalism clauses—the largely overlooked, under-taught, and undertheorized Article IV, Section 2 Privileges and Immunities Clause, Import-Export Clause, and Full Faith and Credit Clause—this Article concludes that none of these clauses was intended to be or is up to the task of checking a state’s nondiscriminatory regulation of products for sale in its own market. Under the constitutional scheme painstakingly laid out by the framers, who were no strangers to Big States, protection against having to comply with unwanted rules governing an irresistible, big market lies either in a company’s choice to refrain from market participation or with Congress stepping into the breach
Prologue
Get PDFPrologue by the Academy Advisory Board Co-Chairs for this special issue of the American University International Law Review featuring the winning papers and honorable mentions from the 2023 Human Rights Essay Award, sponsored by the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of American University Washington College of Law
El Repudio y la Aversión a lo Étnico, Confrontando a la Discriminación Racial en México
No full textThis article examines the concepts of ethnicity (ethnic), racism and the legal principle of equality and non-discrimination with a focus on the historical, social, political and legal factors that are linked to contempt and aversion to ethnicity