After 7 yrs of work, the special issue "China in Compliance" is out with @reggovjournal.bsky.social. The focus is to unpack how #compliance works in globalizing China. #Cambodia #Kyrgyzstan #Tajikistan #Fiji #Vanuatu #Singapore #Taiwan #Ethiopia #Hungary onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

PoLAR is hiring a new managing editor. The full details are available here: shorturl.at/uqEn5

These figures rebut the “whataboutism” line of the administration.

My amazing colleague Bec Hamilton is swimming 20km to raise money for Charlie's Place, a drop-in shelter for homeless in #WashingtonDC whose numbers and hardships are increasing of late. Please consider giving here: www.gofundme.com/f/swim-for-c... Thank you.

"We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent." —Justice Sonia Sotomayor

The incremental normalization of life under authoritarianism is one of its defining features. Authoritarianism is often not a rupture but, rather, a slow tear. *Every* day we must be vigilant to this fact.

Yes!

Inspiring and on such a hot and humid day!

This is what democracy looks like! A people united will never be defeated. We want federal forces out of DC NOW! #WeAreAllDC #FreeDC

#FreeDC Mass march hitting the streets of DC now.

“The follow-up message is that for those of us who are not Supreme Court justices or Republican legislators should resist every day in every way we can. Put sand in the gears, make it slower, make everybody else know that we are not alone, and that there are more of us than there are of them.”

A new study by Kiel Institute on How China Collateralizes show how rather than infrastructure as collateral, it's cash collateral in escrow reserves paid by debtor's commodity exports which underpin such agreements. Governance implications. www.ifw-kiel.de/fileadmin/Da... @agelpern.bsky.social

The ad campaign criticizing the use of masks by federal agents working in Washington, D.C. has expanded to 115 bus stops, per organizers

This.

The Far Right are the new globalists. The Center-Left must up their game. Better coalitions, better policies, better messaging, better *listening*.

Incredibly insightful. Also: “While the outlook is bleak, resistance is not futile…Support independent media…Organize locally to strengthen grassroots networks that resist authoritarian policies…Strengthen ties with global democratic movements to share strategies and resources…”

Seeing these all over the city. #FreeDC

In solidarity.

Looking forward to presenting "Adversarial Comparativism: The Role of Emotion in US-China Comparative Law Projects" next week @georgetownlaw.bsky.social's Comparative Law Colloquium. Thanks to Yvonne Tew for the invite. Draft paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Sharing an amicus curiae brief I co-wrote with Jeffrey Green, Rose Cuison-Villazor, @jackchin.bsky.social, and Pei (Leo) Yu. The Arkansas laws, Act 636 and Act 174, violate federal preemption and equal protection. Discriminatory state laws must be stopped. drive.google.com/file/d/1NzDv...

Walking to work in DC this morning.

“It revolves around Alice Law and Peter Murdoch, two graduate students who venture to Hell to rescue their adviser…He was a cruel mentor, yet they fear that they will never succeed on the job market without securing a letter of recommendation from him.” Omg. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades…unless the abrupt funding cuts…are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030.”

A Casebook on Chinese Outbound Investment: Law, Policy, and Business is out in the wild - in Chile! W/ Ignacio Tornero, a contributor, and Prof. Francisco Urdinez, @pucminas.bsky.social. Get your free download: www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

@ncuscr.bsky.social is delighted to announce the twenty fellows who make up the ninth cohort of our Public Intellectuals Program. Learn more about the newest #PIPFellows: www.ncuscr.org/twenty-leadi...

Great @carnegieendowment.org report out by Asel Dooletkeldieva & Till Mostowlansky on Chinese miners' adaptation to regulatory environment in Kyrgyzstan. Funded by @erc.europa.eu and the China, Law and Development project. carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/0...

Latest newsletter from @ox.ac.uk China Centre out: www.chinacentre.ox.ac.uk/sitefiles/ch...

#China's GDP growth in #Q2 (5.2%) shows that #Trump has not yet been able to dent China's growth. One of the main factors behind such a number is external demand: not only are exports growing fast (5.8%), but imports are stagnant (1.1%), as well as consumption (vouchers might have helped a bit).

Heads up: militarization of ICE as sledgehammer of federal government against all perceived opponents.

STAGGERING: This new study of 133 countries is the first to estimate the impact of all USAID’s work. In 2 decades, it has saved *92M* lives. Current cuts, if not reversed, are forecast to cost up to *14M* lives thru 2030. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Here is the study in The Lancet, which estimates that the elimination of USAID funding could lead to over 14 million deaths, including over 4.5 million children, by 2030: www.thelancet.com/jo...

“Only the complete destruction of the greatest knowledge-production system in the history of the world will stop them from decapitating and dismantling American universities.” newrepublic.com/article/1973...

Devastating. We need push back on this.

An important study especially regarding dynamics both within and outside China on China scholarship. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Some good news. www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/j...

“Many scholars have found that personalist dictators tend to be more militarily aggressive.” Prophetic. www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

"Legal Brokers of Overseas Investment in Emerging Economies: Achieving or Undermining Compliance?" by Molly Bodurtha, Sokphea Young, and myself now up on @ox.ac.uk Business Law Blog. blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/oblb/blog-po... #compliance #legalservices #corruption

No. In a previous life, I was a “shovel bum” (conservation archaeologist) in US nat’l parks and gained a deep appreciation for these places & their importance to the country. This is another revisionist reading of law that should be opposed. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Judges across the political spectrum, including 72% of Republican appointees and 80% of Democratic appointees, are ruling against the Trump administration at high rates, according to a recent study from Stanford. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Summer reading.

Helpful. politicalandlegalanthro.org/2025/05/23/t...

Thanks for this, @ssrn.bsky.social! By way of further background, the article tried to make sense of how those engaging in comparative law projects may operate through various forms of emotion including faux emotion, projection, psychological sabotage, and gaslighting, among others.

Protect our judges. open.substack.com/pub/robertre...

Looks like a timely event. www.su.se/department-o...

Great to see this out. This is the result of 6 years of planning and research and will be forthcoming as part of a special issue in #RegGov. Many thanks to my co-authors Molly Bodurtha & Sokphea Young. #CLD

We will not win the battle for democracy if those in the pro-democracy movement prize caution over taking risks. We cannot permit ourselves to be deterred by the defeats and public criticism that are inevitable along the long path of restoring democracy. Now is the time for fearless leadership.

The US is ceding global leadership to China.

Nice to see this piece by @csis.org's Philip Luck & Richard Gray on "The Shifting Landscape of US-China Economic Relations" in @lawfaremedia.org. Hope it can nudge US policy makers towards a more nuanced and calibrated engagement with China on trade regulation. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

On the final day of his constitutional law class this past semester, BC law professor Kent Greenfield told his students that we as a country are at a turning point not unlike a key moment during the battle of Gettysburg. I'm proud to publish his inspirational remarks on the blog. 👇