China – Overlawyered

Missouri to sue China and its ruling Communist Party over pandemic

Walter Olson — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 04:05:28 +0000

“Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, blames China for letting the coronavirus spread. So he’s suing China, three government ministries, two local governments, two laboratories and the Chinese Communist Party in U.S. District Court.” A suit of this sort by a state against a foreign sovereign would ordinarily be stopped in its tracks by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, but never fear: “Last week, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley introduced legislation to strip China of its sovereign immunity.” [Frank Morris, NPR]

As my colleague Ted Galen Carpenter observed on Monday, there are many and substantial reasons to blame Beijing for bad conduct during the pandemic, and American public opinion has taken note of that. Still, sovereign immunity aside, under the constitutional design laid down by the Framers states aren’t supposed to pursue their own foreign policies. As the Supreme Court put it in Hines v. Davidowitz (1941), “Our system of government … requires that federal power in the field affecting foreign relations be left entirely free from local interference.” In Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council (2000) the Court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law barring state entities from buying goods or services from companies doing business with Burma (Myanmar) on the grounds that it interfered with the power of Congress and the Executive Branch to make the most of the sanctions power by exerting unified control over it.

It’s not clear that the different circumstances here would trip the Crosby wire, but Missouri is treading a path here not unlike that of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, long deservedly criticized for sticking its nose into foreign policy causes whether good or bad. It is noteworthy that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who takes a somewhat broader view of states’ permissible involvement in this field than do her majority colleagues, has written nonetheless that the case for pre-emption is strongest “when a state action ‘reflects a state policy critical of foreign governments and involve[s] sitting in judgment on them.'” Explicitly hostile measures toward a foreign power are especially likely to undermine U.S. foreign policy by raising the chance of a breach in relations or retaliation. David R. Schmahmann and James S. Finch have more in this 1998 Cato briefing paper.

Tags: China, constitutional law, COVID-19 virus, Missouri

Missouri to sue China and its ruling Communist Party over pandemic is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

COVID-19 pandemic roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 10:05:00 +0000

“On free speech in and after pandemics, the United States demonstrates the right approach and China the wrong — in fact not just wrong but deadly.” [my new post at Cato]
“Can the Government Just Close My Favorite Bar?” [Keith Whittington on the “police power” in constitutional law; similarly Elizabeth Joh via libertarian legal scholar Randy Barnett]
“Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong have brought outbreaks under control — and without resorting to China’s draconian measures.” [Benjamin J. Cowling and Wey Wen Lim, New York Times]
“Stop It With the Coronavirus Curfews Already” [Matt Welch]
House-passed bill includes liability protection for medical mask makers [Michael Carroll, Legal Newsline; Steven Nelson, New York Post; earlier]
How to answer the glib one-liner “There are no libertarians in a pandemic”? [Bonnie Kristian, The Week; Keith Whittington] Turn it around: “There are only libertarians in a pandemic.” [Nick Gillespie]

Tags: China, constitutional law, COVID-19 virus, free speech, medical

COVID-19 pandemic roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Regulators should get out of the way of broad COVID-19 testing

Walter Olson — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 10:01:43 +0000

“After suffering from the initial outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), China appears to have succeeded at turning around its spread through the use of highly coercive measures such as widespread home confinement of both healthy and sick persons. Can societies with more individual liberty match its success without losing their character?” My new Cato piece argues that widespread testing has been a key to South Korea’s success and if the United States is to follow up it needs to open up regulatory permissions. With bonus provocation at the end about Bill Gates and billionaires!

Tags: China, COVID-19 virus, medical, public health, South Korea, WO writings

Regulators should get out of the way of broad COVID-19 testing is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

A traveling Chinese executive is arrested

Walter Olson — Sat, 15 Dec 2018 17:01:55 +0000

Urged by the U.S., Canada recently arrested Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou. “Meng was traveling in Canada, switching planes using a Chinese passport, when she was taken into custody.” For Tyler Cowen, the “procedural normality of the arrest is precisely what scares me. There are so many international laws, and so many are complex or poorly defined, and there are a couple hundred countries in the world. Arguably most multinational corporations are breaking some law in some manner or another, and thus their senior executives are liable to arrest. If I were a top U.S. tech company executive, I would be reluctant to travel to China right now, for fear of retaliation.” [Bloomberg] See also the FIFA (soccer) controversy, 2015, and related: our series of 2006 posts about the arrest of traveling British executives on charges of remotely violating U.S. online gambling laws.

For more on the scope of white-collar crime laws, see my chapter on white-collar prosecution in last year’s Cato Handbook for Policymakers 8th Edition.

Tags: China, crime and punishment, extraterritoriality

A traveling Chinese executive is arrested is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Publisher: we’re canceling book on influence of Chinese government in Australia

Walter Olson — Sat, 25 Nov 2017 15:13:26 +0000

Allen & Unwin, the publisher, says it does not plan to publish a book by Charles Sturt University academic Clive Hamilton called Silent Invasion, on the influence of the Chinese government in high places in Australia. Hamilton says the publisher has privately communicated to him that it is afraid of facing defamation lawsuits should it go forward. [Andrew Greene, Australian Broadcasting Corporation]

Tags: Australia, China, libel slander and defamation, publishers

Publisher: we’re canceling book on influence of Chinese government in Australia is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Take care where you reincarnate

Walter Olson — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 10:31:10 +0000

On my trip to San Francisco last week I was delighted finally to meet Kevin Underhill, longtime writer of one of the most consistently funny and well-written of legal blogs, Lowering the Bar. If there were any justice in the world I would link a post of Kevin’s every day or two, but for the moment I’ll just note this one from last month: For years now, China has “forbidden anyone to reincarnate without [its] express written permission.”

Tags: China, humor, legal blogs, religious liberty

Take care where you reincarnate is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

International free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 25 May 2016 04:05:55 +0000

Tonight in New York City, Cato presents its Milton Friedman Award to Danish journalist Flemming Rose, a key figure in the [still-ongoing] Mohammed cartoons episode, and author of The Tyranny of Silence [David Boaz, Cato]
Troubles in Turkey: journalists sentenced to two years in jail for reprinting Charlie Hebdo cover [Reuters, Reason] Erdogan’s campaign against foreign critics assumes extraterritorial reach with complaints against comedian in Germany and Geneva exhibit [Colin Cortbus/Popehat, Foreign Policy]
Ya mad wee dafty: “Man faces hate crime charge in Scotland over dog’s ‘Nazi salute'” [Guardian]
Publish a “wrong” map of India, face seven years in jail and a huge fine [Hindustan Times; “crore” = 10 million]
United Kingdom man fined £500 for calling romantic rival “fat-bellied codhead. [Blackpool Gazette]
Emulating USA tycoon D. Trump, China pressures finance analysts against negative forecasts [WSJ, Barron’s on the Marvin Roffman story, which I used to tell when giving speeches on my book The Litigation Explosion]

Tags: Cato Institute, China, Donald Trump, free speech, Germany, hate speech, India, Scotland, Switzerland, The Litigation Explosion, Turkey, United Kingdom

International free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

May 18 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 18 May 2016 04:05:40 +0000

Do behavioral economists acknowledge policymakers’ own foibles? Not often it seems [Niclas Berggren via Bryan Caplan]
China, not unlike our own attorney general-environmentalist alliance, is cracking down on the work of what it deems ideologically harmful nonprofits [ABA Journal]
Barking mad: new ABA ethics proposal would deem it professional misconduct for lawyers to discriminate on various grounds, including “socioeconomic status,” in choosing partners, employees and experts [Eugene Volokh, Sara Randazzo/WSJ Law Blog]
Virginia still has a law requiring annual safety inspection of your car, and it’s still a bad idea [Alex Tabarrok]
Court in Canadian province of New Brunswick rules against honoring will that left estate to racist group [CBC]
From the left, Paul Bland sees Monday’s Supreme Court decision in Spokeo v. Robins as a big loss for business defendants [Public Justice, earlier] Contra: Andrew Pincus, plus more from WLF.

Tags: bar associations, Canada, China, discrimination law, lawyers, Virginia, wills and trusts

May 18 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 2 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 05:05:00 +0000

Pennsylvania bill would restrict the pre-paid business cemeteries could do, which by remarkable coincidence would benefit their competitors on the funeral home side [Allentown Morning Call]
How to get capital out of China? Lose a lawsuit on purpose [Chuin-Wei Yap, WSJ Law Blog]
Arms-trafficking sting caught crusader against videogames, guns: “Judge Sentences Ex-California Senator Leland Yee to Five Years for Racketeering” [KNTV (auto-plays), earlier]
Workplace bias, which can mean a lot of things, would be an ethics violation for lawyers under proposed ABA model rule [ABA Journal, more]
Breaking: New York court denies Donald Trump’s bid to throw out AG Eric Schneiderman’s suit over Trump University [ruling, The Hill, Eric Turkewitz] More background: Lowering the Bar.
Grounding interstate comity: California Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) wants to ban state-funded travel to sister states with religious conscience laws [Bay Area Reporter (“discrimination of any kind …will certainly not be tolerated beyond our borders.”)]
“NY Times: Contaminated Property Makes For Costly Inheritance” [Paul Caron/TaxProf]

Tags: China, competition through regulation, Donald Trump, real estate

March 2 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“It would become extinct in five years with no incentive to replant.”

Walter Olson — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 10:29:41 +0000

A lesson in conservation: wild ginseng, which often grows on parkland, is under pressure due to high demand from overseas, but an expert says “if the Feds try to protect [it] by banning its sale, the black market will swallow the remainder up.” [Clint Rainey, New York mag]

Tags: agriculture and farming, China, endangered species

“It would become extinct in five years with no incentive to replant.” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system