I had a nice 5-hour drive from Boston to Cornell (Ithaca New York) Friday morning, and returned today. On the way, I listened to a "book on tape," which was a nice way to pass the time.
I attended two conferences. The first was organized by the very able students at Cornell International Law Journal, under the guidance of Robert Hockett. It was on global justice. I could not attend all of the conference, because I had earlier committed to attending another simultaneous conference at Cornell, but this conference had a very interesting array of political philosophers, lawyers and economists, and I am convinced that the interdiscipinary approach is necessary in this field.
I also attended another conference about evaluating the public side of private international law, organized by Karen Knop and Annelise Riles. This conference examined a number of interesting issues. For me, it was interesting how wide a scope of issues is included in the term "private law" and "private international law." For some private international law specialists, even rules of prescriptive jurisdiction in regulation may be included in "private international law." From here, it may not be such a large step to include authority allocation rules contained in WTO law. For example, the disputed product-process distinction, and the disputed question of the territorial scope of Article XX(b) of GATT have authority allocating consequences. I'll just mention briefly a couple of interesting papers. Teemu Ruskola presented an interesting historical analysis of the U.S. "extraterritorial" extrusion of judicial authority into China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This discussion showed just how fractured concepts of jurisdiction and citizenship can become, and how sometimes nationality can overcome territoriality. Ralk Michaels had an interesting paper on the law and economics of private international law.
I originally came to WTO law because of an interest in issues of allocation of regulatory authority, so it is interesting for me to see what those who work in this area are doing.
