EXPERT ANALYSIS OF GLOBAL LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS

My client, Jamie Belcastro, a registered pharmacist, started Belmora LLC, a small, Virginia-based company that sells nonprescription pain relief products, about 20 years ago. For much of this time Bayer AG, the Big Pharma multinational colossus headquartered in Germany—whose gross revenues approach $50 billion—has been trying to use US trademark law to put Belmora out [...]

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North Carolina has an important connection to the “state secrets” at the center of an October 6 US Supreme Court argument. In this case, Guantanamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah seeks testimony from two former CIA contractors, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, on torture he suffered at a secret CIA prison in Poland. The contractors’ evidence would [...]

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A 2019 United Nations (UN) report found that “it is imperative that environmental laws are widely understood, respected, and enforced and the benefits of environmental protection are enjoyed by people and the planet.” Globally, more and more governments are coming to this realization: that there are vital (and fragile) links between the environment and all [...]

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Gryffindor, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Antitrust analysis is harder to get right than progressive trustbusters would have you believe. In fact, determining whether a business is violating principles of market competition is so complicated that judges and regulators often make mistakes. But the folks running the Federal Trade Commission think they know better. Here’s the thing: They don’t. Over the [...]

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Abstract: For Israel, core issues surrounding Iran’s still-accelerating nuclear weapons program have been strategic and political, rather than legal. Nonetheless, if Israel should ever decide that it no longer has any reasonable alternative to launching a preemptive attack against certain Iranian military/industrial targets, this defensive first-strike would need to be justified under international law. In [...]

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Essentially, commercial arbitration in Iran is divided into two categories: domestic and international, each of which is subject to special regulations. The legal regime governing the domestic arbitration is Chapter Seven of the Iranian Code of Civil Procedure that applies to arbitrations mainly between Iranian nationals. In recent years, the parties to commercial disputes in Iran [...]

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In April, a book I co-edited on the topic of how to integrate diversity, equity, and social justice skills and issues into the traditional American 1L curriculum was published. While it is certainly not the first book to tackle this subject, Integrating Doctrine and Diversity takes an innovative approach in its scope, organization, tone, and [...]

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The Apex Court’s verdict on August 6 in Amazon Holdings LLC v. Future Retail Ltd., upholding the enforceability of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre’s (SIAC) emergency award and putting rest to a year-long dispute between two multinational commerce giants, sealed a victory not just for Amazon but also for India’s future integrating international arbitration within its [...]

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KING RODRIGUEZ/Presidential Photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Amid Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s condemnation of the International Criminal Court’s investigation into cases of crimes against humanity involving the murder of 12,000 to 30,000 civilians, at least two major scenarios emerge. First is the institutional empowerment of the victims of Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs.” This is in terms of their active recognition by the [...]

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The Rajasthan State Assembly recently passed the Rajasthan Compulsory Registration of Marriages (Amendment) Bill, 2021 (“Amendment bill”) which provided for compulsory registration of marriages, including child marriages. This bill faced severe opposition from non-governmental organizations, activists and political parties because it ‘legitimizes’ child marriages and is said to be in contravention of several child protection [...]

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