From December 1, 2021, the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, has delegated to an Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) the decision whether a new international pandemic agreement would be a binding treaty, a compact formed under WHO’s unique regulatory authority, or a set of non-binding recommendations. On July 21, 2022, […]
On February 21, 2022, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would recognize Donetsk and Luhansk, provinces now generally recognized as part of the sovereign territory of the Ukraine, as independent states. The recognitions raise numerous (urgent and alarming) questions of international peace and security, but for the limited purpose of this blog and […]
With Engineering Rules, JoAnne Yates and Craig Murphy have contributed an important volume analyzing the history of standardization generally, and with tailored historical insights for individual standard-setting bodies, consortia, and entrepreneurs. The compilation, identification, and preservation of new primary materials will no doubt be of enormous aid to future scholars. They are to be congratulated […]
Nicholas Parrillo’s Federal Agency Guidance and the Power to Bind provides an important window into the perspectives of diverse stakeholders on the use, structure, and influence of agency guidance. Parrillo ultimately argues that agencies adopt, and regulated or interested stakeholders internalize, guidance through a complex process that belies simplistic assertions that agencies, more or less, […]
In my third and final post, I address the important points raised by Susan Sell, Peter Yu, and Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan. Professor Sell, one of the most important analysts of the rise of international intellectual property law, as well as of its winners and losers, urges caution as to how much the international intellectual property […]
With this post, I continue my engagement with symposium contributors Professors Pojanowski, Walker, Osei-Tutu, and Judd and repeat my thanks for the time and care they took in reviewing the monograph. This is the second of three posts intending to address the criticisms and suggestions made during the symposium. IV. Jeff Pojanowski provides a superb […]
Let me begin by thanking both regular and special contributors to this symposium as well as extending an even heartier thanks to Patricia Judd, Rachel Kogan and particularly Chris Walker for the time and energy they dedicated to introducing and organizing it. The richness and care with which the essays were drafted demonstrate, I hope, […]
There are already so many thorough analyses, illustrative applications, and thoughtful extrapolations of Jon Michaels’s provocative thesis, it took some time to decide where anything more might be usefully contributed. It is, I think, at the conceptual role “privatization” plays in Constitutional Coup’s core argument. The threat privatization poses to our fundamental constitutional order, according […]
Many thanks to Peter and, of course, Judge Williams for a book rich with lessons for historians, scholars of the administrative state, and, for me, at least, international relations. In a world where autocracy remains common if more threatened, Judge Williams sets out to explore the prerequisites for autocracies to transition (peacefully, it would appear) […]
On May 23, 2017, the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, elected Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as the new Director-General of WHO. Dr Tedros, a former Ethiopian Health Minister, is the first African leader of the international organization. WHO is distinct among international organizations for its ability to initiate both treaties […]
There is substantial evidence that opioid addiction poses a significant threat to individual and public health in the United States. The CDC reports that the majority of drug overdose deaths (more than six out of ten) involve an opioid. Since 1999, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids quadrupled. From 2000 to 2015 more than […]
Now that the potential repeal of Obamacare is off the table (at least for a while), it’s worth turning attention (by all stakeholders) to one of Obamacare’s provisions crafted to accommodate approaches advocated across the political spectrum as well as the balance between local and national scale: Section 1332 State Innovation Waivers and Section 1115 […]
Citing President Trump’s January 20 Executive Order, the IRS has altered the reporting mechanism for “minimum essential coverage” under the Affordable Care Act. A Form 1040 taxpayer, for example, had to check a box on line 61 to confirm coverage. If a taxpayer did not do so, the form was rejected. Because the “executive order […]
Following Nick’s insightful post and in light of both President Trump’s speech this evening as well as House GOP defections from the leaked bill, it’s worth surveying the alternatives to Obamacare GOP legislators have floated so far and what might end up getting stitched together to form the outline of a unifying GOP plan. On […]
Donald Trump’s team has led an insurrection against the dogma of free trade, calling for a revision or dissolution of NAFTA and killing US participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They promise to “repeal and replace” the prevailing multilateral system with bilateral deals that do a better job of allocating trade gains to the U.S. (and, […]