"Could - and should - English win the "language war" in regional integration? NAFTA and EU experience"

Must have been about a year ago when John from Stop Common Purpose UK asked me what I know about the influence of a man named Antonio Gramsci on Communitarian thinking. I was unfamiliar with Gramsci, and planned to look him up sometime later. The next time I saw his name was in Malachai Martin's Keys of This Blood, again I thought I better spend some time looking into this guy's ideas. Now here he is again, this time in a Jean Monnet Working Paper.

Hopefully by now most readers here know that all global-to-local political changes begin with regional trade integration. The EU began as a Soviet idea for a European trade agreement and expanded into a regional government with its own currency and constitution. The EU is held up as the "model" for all other emerging regional unions. And maybe by now most US readers also know that the very idea of regional integration violates our entire constitutional justice system and that if the FBI was doing their job these regional integration activists would be investigated and based upon the abundance of evidence, charged with sedition and treason.

The war is against our sovereignty and existence as an independent nation. Every new regulation and requirement works toward this purpose.

The North American Model Legislature, Querétaro (México), May 30th to June 4th, 2010 http://www.fina-nafi.org/eng/fina/presentation.asp?count=eng

Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

We are pleased to announce the online publication of the thirteenth paper in the 2009 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

Stephan Sberro, "Could - and should - English win the "language war" in regional integration? NAFTA and EU experience"
(JMWP no. 13/09)

Whereas the linguistic governance of the European Union and its institutions is the object of a heated political debate, there is no such problem yet in North America. This disregard for a "linguistic balance of power" is likely to be temporary. In the case of a deepening in North American Integration such a political debate is bound to emerge. In such case the experience of the ongoing debate in Europe could be invaluable.

It is a highly political as well as a highly technical debate which has not much to do with purely linguistic considerations and more with political ones. Although it is often considered as inevitable, choosing English as the only regional communication language in Europe or North America is neither neutral nor costless.

To frame these discussions, the notion of "soft power" was developed both in the United States and in Europe, although with different approaches. As theorized by Joseph Nye, "soft power" describes the ability of a State to influence directly or indirectly the behaviour or the interests of other actors through cultural or ideological means.

These ideas are an adaptation in International Relations of A. Gramsci's notion of hegemony where dominant ideas are particularly powerful because they are assumed as implicit aspects of a more explicit ideology. It is also related to P. Bourdieu's ideas about the symbolic value and thus domination of one particular language over others, based on misrecognition (méconnaissance).

To us, language is the most concrete, measurable and should we say scientific way to observe the diffusion of soft power. In this regard, the main focus will be made in three languages that can still be an instrument of power in international relations: English, Spanish and French.

Is a regional linguistic regime desirable and possible in North America? Is the European linguistic policy successful and is it a useful reference? These are the questions we shall consider in this article.

We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org. (all external links and red font added by me, N.R.)

Guess it's time to get started:
http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/

North American Integration? As in NAU? So it wasn't just a silly conspiracy theory after all?

"The North American Integration and Development Center was created to conduct ongoing research concerning North American integration and to assist communities and governments with policies and investment projects for sustainable and equitable development across borders."
http://naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/

"The governments of Canada, the United States, and Mexico face thorny challenges as they decide whether and how to accelerate smooth, and institutionalize the integration process. Pastor, Rozenthal, and Beatty encourage greater dialogue among the three governments and their citizens, as well as more systematic thinking among policymakers and citizens about the promise and challenges of further North American integration." The Future of North American Integration Beyond NAFTA, Trade, Global Economics, Peter Hakim and Robert E. Litan, eds., Brookings Institution Press 2002 c. 129pp.

Kostas A. Lavdas and Dimitris N. Chryssochoou, "Republican Europe in a Liberal Milieu" (JMWP no. 05/09)

Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

We are pleased to announce the online publication of the fifth paper in the 2009 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

Kostas A. Lavdas and Dimitris N. Chryssochoou, "Republican Europe in a Liberal Milieu"
(JMWP no. 05/09)

With republican theory emerging as a form of scholarly inquiry on Europe's puzzling transformations, a variety of civic conceptions of the European Union (EU) bring into focus the uses of normative theory. This paper, drawing from a rich intellectual tradition, argues that a challenge central to EU constitutionalism is to utilize Europe's republican tradition for its emerging polity. But we also need a new way of theorizing European diversity, as the latter transcends national differences by embracing a variety of cultural and spatial dimensions. But how are we to combine a robust (republican) grounding for constitutionalism and a celebratory affirmation of differences? We suggest that, by tackling the question of democracy in the EU from a liberal republican angle that endorses a new form of civic polyculturalism, one can assign meaning to Europe's envisaged transformation into a res publica composita. The theoretical challenge is thus set: to go beyond what is evident in Europe's novel experimentations with democracy so as to embrace latent but crucial potentialities.

We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org.

"The United Nations, the European Union, and the King of Sweden: Economic Sanctions and Individual Rights in a Plural World Order"

Dear friends of the ACL,

Most of us know there is a fundamental difference between US individual rights and UN human rights, so I don't expect any of you to become confused by this paper. And keeping in step with the ever changing language of the communitarian spin masters, we're not in a New World Order anymore, now it's a Plural World Order. We suggest you put your b.s. waders on before venturing into the murky waters at Jean Monnet:

Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

We are pleased to announce the online publication of the second paper in the 2009 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

Daniel Halberstam and Eric Stein, "The United Nations, the European Union, and the King of Sweden: Economic Sanctions and Individual Rights in a Plural World Order"
(JMWP no. 02/09)

Reawakened from its decades-long slumber during the Cold War, the UN Security Council has become more active than ever before. Increased UN activity, however, has not always spelled increased accountability. The problem is particularly acute with regard to the UN Security Council's anti-terrorism Resolutions that impose economic sanctions on named individuals who are suspected of sponsoring the Taliban or Al Qaeda. These targeted sanctions, or the process by which they are determined, are in severe tension with international and domestic conceptions of fundamental rights.

When the UN enlists regional organizations and States in freezing the assets of named individuals, the multiplicity of legal actors and systems bearing down on the individual may be a blessing or a curse. The resulting plurality of claims to legal authority may create multiple veto points that check for the protection of fundamental values or may provide myriad opportunities for obstruction, burden shifting, and evasion of responsibility. The difficulty, then, lies in arriving at an approach that can mediate productively between the needs for collective action and the particular perspective of each institutional participant without losing site of fundamental values, such as human rights.

This Article tackles these issues in the European context in which they prominently unfolded. This Article (1) examines the international human rights constraints that operate on UN authority, (2) briefly discusses the UN's anti-terrorist sanctions regimes, (3) examines the European Community's powers to implement targeted sanctions, and (4) analyzes the clash of legal orders in the context of recent litigation in the European Courts – especially in the momentous Kadi case – surrounding the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in the European Union and its Member States.

We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org.

"Tracking Judicial Dialogue-The Scope for Preliminary Rulings from the Italian Constitutional Court"

Personal news:

Back in gertee after a month in Palmer. It's snowed about a foot since we left and I had to shovel a path to my woodpile before I could chainsaw a load. It's warm though, staying above zero, and yeah, that makes my life a lot easier.

If it stays warm Tim promised he'll hitch up a team and start teaching all his eager neighbors how to mush. He hooked me up with 4 dogs 2 years ago today but I haven't done it since. I'm determined to mush this winter and hoping one of his leads can train our Osa to pull. He doesn't think Osa will be worth anything but that's only because he breeds champion race dogs. We have to clear trails first and he's busy trapping, plus the fact that he doesn't have any sleds left cause he's been selling them along with the teams, so he has to make more now. The work never ends around here and I'd be better off learning to make my own sleds too.

I called him from Palmer before I left and he had to hang up because he was trying to find a spot with thick enough ice to cross the river. Then he told me he's seen lot of grizzly tracks, figures they're still out cause it's been so warm. Said there's a long stretch of deadfall where the riverbank caved in and that's where they like to make their dens. I went with him once to check beaver traps cause there were bears that time too, but I decided I'm just not that interested in trapping. But I do eat meat and love wearing fur, nothing warmer in my experience, and with a little effort I've found some good deals on fur coats on ebay, one was only 10 bucks because it had a few rips. Won it, sewed it tonight and think it'll make a fine bathrobe and extra blanket when it does get down to 50 below. I know it will, only a matter of when.

Serious leaking action with all the fresh snow on the roof, got 4 main drips with containers underneath them, and already have almost 3 gallons, which is enough to do the dishes! Saves me hauling it in and making me realize how important it is to figure out how to collect rainwater, at least in a more organized way. Once I put the new roof cover up the drips will stop, and I hope I never slack in that department ever again. I'm gonna have to change all the wall coverings and replace the carpet. My car is buried under 18 inches so I'll be digging it out before I'm going anywhere. Put the new woodstove together but it's taller than the one I borrowed from Ron so I need to get the tin cutters from Tim and adjust the stack height before I install it.

The Mercantile is still open, Lisa Boone leased it and will hopefully be buying it in the spring. We agreed to put the site back up and figure the bill out later. This means I will not starve over the winter as long as there is still food available in the stores. Well, I wouldn't starve anyway with my beans and rice stash, but I have an income source and am very grateful for that. I took advantage of the fast internet in Palmer and wrote several pages for the Merc's Adventure Highways portion. We have the go-ahead to start realizing the Vacation Packages business too. This is also good news for Camp Redingon and could be a big boost to local tourist providers next season. The State of Alaska Division of Tourism and Palin's Rural Economic Plans DO NOT include advertising and marketing local businesses UNLESS they are connected to the Parks. I think Kenny Lakers are being punished for flat-out rejecting Scenic ByWay designation. If you're a tourist going to Wrangell St. Elias National Park, this "red" state would prefer you only know about Wellwood Center (the local School of the Earth), WISE, and McCarthy-Kennicott Mine.

My research turned up some rude facts regarding the future of my neighborhood. There really is no place left in the USA that exists outside the plan. If there were such a place it would be here, but it's not. Free Alaska ended when Alaska joined the union (1958) and all the regulators arrived to stop people from living off the land, Fabian style. It was pretty mind blowing to see the official sites' "facts" as opposed to what I found in the Alaska state historical archives. It's so hard to separate me from my work; even though the Merc's site is not political at all, I still went into ACL mode writing the essay on Kenny Lake. http://www.kennylake.com/kennylake.htm

In ACL News:

New constitutions are required to give the new governing bodies legitimacy (and enforcement powers). Here are a couple examples of how law students in the USA are taught the concepts for Communitarian Law (called Community Law) and what judicial supremacy entails.

"Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

"We are pleased to announce the online publication of the tenth paper in the 2008 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

"Marco Dani, "Tracking Judicial Dialogue-The Scope for Preliminary Rulings from the Italian Constitutional Court"
(JMWP no. 10/08)

"In cases 102-103/2008 for the first time the Italian Constitutional Court has referred a question to the Court of Justice under the article 234 EC procedure. The article analyses this decision in light of previous contrary case law and argues that, insofar as supremacy will be construed according to the Simmenthal doctrine, the scope for preliminary ruling from that Constitutional Court will be rather narrow, as mainly limited to principaliter proceedings.

"Such a conclusion brings about an important theoretical implication. Constitutional Courts such as the Italian one will face difficulties in interacting directly with the Court of Justice and, notably, in conveying at supranational level the authentic versions of national constitutional traditions. Conversely, ordinary courts seem in a better position to play a similar role. As a consequence, if we want the Court of Justice to modify its octroyée methodology of construing common constitutional traditions, we have to place all our stakes on a judicial dialogue based on ordinary courts as the privileged interface between the EU and national constitutional environments.

"We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org."

A keyword search for the phrase "Simmenthal doctrine" leads back to a Jean Monnet working paper: ("6) Constitutional law and European integration":
http://www.jeanmonnetprogram.org/papers/98/985006.html

"Political integration of constitutional states, including the fifteen members of the European Union, requires a constitutional basis. The constitution is the supreme affirmation of the primordial power of a people over themselves (as a collectivity), and over the space they occupy. The constitution organizes various branches of government, establishes the balance between them, and sets the limits of power by guaranteeing a set of fundamental rights against (public or private) trespass. From this source derive the legitimacy of power and the validity of the law it enacts. In short, the constitution "constitutes" the state by establishing it as a legal entity[26].

"Clearly, the process of integration profoundly transforms the states involved on a number of levels.

"By definition, integration involves a reduction in state sovereignty.[27] The extent of this reduction is pre-defined. It may be indefinitely increased either through reform of the founding Treaties, or, more informally, by the ever widening interpretation of the Treaties clauses establishingthe jurisdiction of Community bodies over member states. The tendency to increase the power of the Community, and consequently to limit that of the member states, is not a passing phase, nor is it attributable to power-hungriness among "Eurocrats" in Brussels. Rather, this tendency is structural - a necessary consequence of the telos of the system, which the Treaty of Maastricht defines as the search for "a more and more perfect union." As this formulation indicates, the process of integration is set on an infinite time scale without pre-defined techniques for determination and attribution of competencies to the Community.[28]

"This deliberate alteration of the status of member states, in turn, generates other changes, which are unavoidable if the integration process is to continue. First, integration changes the very structure of national legal systems. Logically, the submission of the State to the Community requires that Community law prevail over national law in the sphere of Community responsibilities. In each of the member states, the Community is source of a new law whose provisions prevail over domestic norms of any level. The supremacy of this new body of law liberates the national judges who must apply it from their duty of absolute submission to nation law, including national constitutional law, and, in effect, transforms them into Community judges. The main implication of this release is to allow national judges to escape in some measure the binding force of fundamental rights as defined in their respective national constitutions.[29]

"Secondly, the supremacy of Community law substantially modifies the formal subordination of governments to their respective Parliaments, whose principal consequence for the domestic legal orders of member states is the supremacy of statutes over delegated legislation and executive orders. The supremacy of "derived" or secondary Community law, made by the representatives of national governments in the Council of Ministers, turns upside down this relationship.

"Finally, integration also alters the balance established by national constitutions between the central government, and regional and local entities and organizations.

"Providing an adequate constitutional basis for a transformation of this magnitude is necessary for the states involved, since their own legitimacy would fall into doubt if changes were carried out in opposition to their respective constitutions. The Community is also in vital need of an articulated constitutional basis, given that it has only the power granted to it by its member states and its law exists only to the extent that national judges, whose decisions cannot be reviewed by the European Court of Justice, respect it.[30] Obviously, judges will not be able to respect Community law if its validity and its asserted primacy have no basis of support in the constitutions they are bound by oath to uphold."

And from Old Dog, here's a whole 'nother twist on the law, from the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog (Obama's comrades in community arms):
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2008/11/22/experts-on-the-future-of-the-sec/

"Proportionality: An Assault on Human Rights?" by Stavros Tsakyrakis

Communitarians balance the rights of individuals against the "rights" of the Community. This Jean Monnet working paper focuses on the balancing of American constitutional law.

Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

We are pleased to announce the online publication of the ninth paper in the 2008 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

Stavros Tsakyrakis, "Proportionality: An Assault on Human Rights?"
(JMWP no. 09/08)

Balancing is the main method used by a number of constitutional courts around the world to resolve conflicts of fundamentals rights. The European Court of Human Rights is routinely balancing human rights against each other and against conflicting public interests and has elevated proportionality to the status of a basic principle of interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights. The paper examines the debate on balancing in the context of American constitutional law and the Convention, and discusses theories which claim that some form of balancing is inherent in human rights adjudication. It argues that proportionality constitutes a misguided quest for precision and objectivity in the resolution of human rights disputes and suggests that courts should instead focus on the real moral issues underlying such disputes.

We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org.

BBC Profile: European Court of Human Rights
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/4789300.stm"

European Court of Human Rights homepage
http://www.echr.coe.int/echr/Homepage_EN

The European Court of Justice and the Protection of Fundamental Rights in the European Community: New Developments and Future Possibilities in Expanding Fundamental Rights Review to Member State Action, by Darcy S. Binder
http://www.jeanmonnetprogram.org/papers/95/9504ind.html

Let's "address the key interpretive questions"

20 foot summer "museum" gertee with
RadiantGUARD on walls, roof and floor.
Raised the temperature to wearing shorts!

Me and some of the boys, whooping it up
at closing time at Tonsina River Lodge.

I'll be on Melodee's radio show,
Give Me Some Truth, Oct 21:
http://www.givemesometruth.info/

Several people have sent me the link to Phillip Jones' Oct 20, 2008 article, The Corporatists published at rense.com. Jones does a fine job of explaining the history of the European "sides," and he identifies them all, by name:

"Their New European Order is little more than a stepping stone to the imposition of a Global tyranny based on the new `Third Way` or Communitarian ideology so beloved of the likes of Tony Blair et al.

"Communitarians want to create a post-modern, post-democratic feudal society run by a small number of rich and powerful people with everyone else working as peasants. In order to achieve their objectives they must destroy the middle class and the nation state."

(Update added 12:19 am, Oct 21: I just noticed the 2nd graph in the above quote in Phillip's article is the exact same thing written on the Stop Common Purpose's Philosophy page @ http://www.stopcp.com/cpphilosophy.php.)

More people are writing about communitarianism than ever before. Unlike Jones, many of them are still clueless what it actually means. Tim Wilson explains the confusion caused by people attempting to describe the synthesis while still "believing" in one side of the dialectic:

"My take on it is that libertarians, frustrated that libertarianism was being mocked by all sides, created communitarianism as a mirror opposite party. Libertarians have insisted that they are somewhere in the middle, even though it's quite impossible to place it on a standard, left/right, political chart. So, making communitarianism into a middle ground as well, well, that is a stroke of genius.

"Is this is an improvement on calling people socialist, or communist?"

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977279249

David Icke put a link to my blog on his "news" page. I've had hundreds of hits from England coming from here from his site. I don't know him and I admit I've never studied his work or listened to any of his tapes. As far as I know Icke does not include anything about communitarianism in his research. My focus has always been communitarianism so I didn't spend any time on his work. Besides, to me he's always seemed like the British Alex Jones (I don't study or listen to Jones either). Icke's Latest News links look like good reading and I don't know why, exactly, but it just seems odd to me that the post he linked to on Oct 18 was "Is the Anti-Communitarian League really necessary?" http://www.davidicke.com/content/blogcategory/30/82/

Rich and powerful people are creating an elitist global system of justice. It continually seeks self-validation for their imposition of corporate trade law on all nations. Now (it seems) national security and public order are in jepordy when international funny money starts disappearing and changing hands. It's called a "state of necessity" (as opposed to the old, familiar "state of emergency"?). My only question for Gov. Sarah Palin now is, will she call out the AK State Militia during a "state of necessity?"

Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

We are pleased to announce the online publication of the sixth paper in the 2008 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

Jürgen Kurtz, "Adjudging the Exceptional at International Law: Security, Public Order and Financial Crisis"
(JMWP no. 06/08)

This paper examines the impact of international law on the ability of states to mitigate the effects of financial crises. It focuses on the invocation of investment treaty disciplines in the aftermath of the 2001-2 Argentine financial crisis and the adjudication of Argentina's defence of a state of necessity, under both subject treaties and at customary international law. The paper uncovers three interpretative methods in the jurisprudence on the relationship between the treaty exception and customary plea of necessity: methodologies I (confluence), II (lex specialis) and III (primary-secondary applications). Method I is the dominant approach in the jurisprudence and the most restrictive of the three readings. The paper argues that method I is mistaken both on a careful interpretation of the two legal standards and on a broader historical analysis of the emergence of investment treaty norms. Given these substantive flaws, the paper isolates the motivations to account for the popularity of this method through a close reading of the awards. These reveal continuing tensions in the field, not least the problematic suggestion that a single value of protection should exclusively inform our understanding of the purpose of investment treaties. These sociological features of investor-state arbitration should, it is suggested, inform our choice on other interpretative methods. This comes down to an election between methods II (lex specialis) and III (primary-secondary applications). Method III is the most convincing and coherent reading of the relationship between the two legal standards. The paper concludes by offering a framework to address the key interpretative questions implicated in that method: (i) the identification and scope of the notion of "public order" and a state's "essential security interests"; and (ii) the appropriate test of "necessity" or means-end scrutiny.

We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org.

In the meantime, I'm busy as heck getting more insulation up and tearing out the molding carpet created from the leak during the big rains. Someday I WILL get to build a gertee from start to finish and THEN move into it. It's been a bigger struggle redoing the inside walls because I pulled all the wool out of little gertee and brought it in here. No more snow yet but it's only getting up to 28 or so during the day so putting up the new roof is going to take some extra figuring out. Got about 2 cords of dried spruce logs, chopped and stacked by my wonderful big strong neighbors who still can't figure out why I don't get myself a husband who will do all the hard work for me. Even without bottom teeth they still think I'm marketable. heh.

Covering a 20 foot Alaskan "home" gertee

Last winter I lived in an 18 foot gertee with my daughter and her newborn. This year we're in a 20 footer that looks and feels a lot more like the modern American yurts we've seen only in pictures. To purchase one of these new costs over ten grand, we made ours for 1/10th of that.

Put the last of the RadiantGuard at the floor level where a lot of hot air escapes. I put it on the roof of the 18 footer and the other morning with no fires in either one, the small RadiantGuard covered gertee was 42 degrees and the 20 footer with the 4 foot roofwindow was 62 degrees. The sunroof lets in a lot of light and I'm hoping I don't have to recover it. A new bubble dome window cover costs about $600. Our recycled plexiglass version is flat but it was free.

The best thing about gertees is once you have a workable roofring and frame it can be covered with just about anything. Our 20 foot model is still covered in canvas and the roof is a 30' tarp pool cover with a parachute liner. This all held up extremely well over the coldest and wettest summer I've ever seen in AK. Anticipating 50 below or colder, I've added RadiantGuard insulation and used wool military ironing board covers to the inside walls and floor. (I love this material and wish I could get on a donation list for Army posts who throw it away.)

I also added plastic windows that were part of a tent liner I bought at Second Chance on Spenard in Anchorage last time we went to town. They have a lot of good stuff but it's mostly overpriced; I had to dicker hard and I still paid too much.

We've transformed the 20 foot gertee "museum" into our personal work space. The difference between the new one (20 feet across with 6 1/2 ft walls) and the first model (18 foot across with 5 foot walls) we lived in for the past year is amazing. We think a 24 footer will be spectacular.

6' water and dishes shelf/room divider.
This started as an old chainsaw made table I got from Rick. First I cleaned it up with white paint. Since I wanted to hang the Sun Showers over my dish sink area, I used my chainsaw and modified it the same way I did my minis (it's my first full sized mini).

New kitchen/LR entryway.
Found the pile of tiles in Tim's "junk" lot, it works on the countertop and entryway floor.

Nightime inside the new kitchen

Just was told our forest firefighter friend saved me a whole box of used emergency fireproof pup tents. He says the material is a lot like the RadiantGuard, only thicker. Oh happy day! Anybody want one before I cut them up?

Thank goodness we finally have an office set up that actually works for us, and stays warm. We're back on track with a whole month before it gets below freezing. I am determined to make it out here through another winter and I think this beautiful larger space will make it just a little bit nicer, for all of us. The roof is the only thing that worries me so I'm gonna cut down an 11 foot diamond willow tree and use it as a main post, then I'll work off it to frame in a loft bedroom over the office. I'll be adding more materials as they arrive.

Donations are always welcome. I could really use more real insulation, bolts of fabric, throw rugs and old sheets and bedspreads. Down comforters would be awesome; after 6 years in the same sleeping bag it fell apart at the zipper and I'm ready for something new. Sure wish I knew how to make quilts. Please send your kind donations to us at HC60 Box 326-A, Copper Center, AK 99573.

Almost the only place the global communitarian system is openly discussed is in upper academia, international law schools and newly established EU national transition agencies. Regardless of 3 EU nation's voter rejections of the EU Constitution, the globalist's regionalization agenda moves forward as planned. Remember, the EU is the MODEL for the Middle Eastern Union, the African Union, the Asian Union and of course the North and South American Unions.

This just came in on the NYU Jean Monnet law school elist:

Scott Siegel, "Courts and Compliance in the European Union: The European Arrest Warrant in National Constitutional Courts"

(JMWP no. 05/08)

"The member states of the European Union have expanded the tools they use to cooperate in combating transnational crime and terrorism. Chief among these is the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant, which requires judicial and police authorities to bypass all national extradition procedures involving suspects residing in an EU member state. Only Germany, Poland, Italy, and the Republic of Cyprus experienced severe delays in implementing the required national legislation. Contrary to the expectations of veto players theory, national constitutional courts do not veto EU law, but instruct legislatures on how best to redraft legislation, securing compliance.

"We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org."

Constitutional Adjudication in the World Trade Organization

Here's a perfect example of why Americans don't understand the ongoing transfer of their personal power to supranational organizations. When the globalists ask "Could" and "should" it should always be answered with our collective "yes." Bold ideas and new meanings will change the world. Has anyone asked Mr. Obama about the new requirements for global citizenship?

Sungjoon Cho, "Constitutional Adjudication in the World Trade Organization" (JMWP no. 04/08)
Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org.

"Although a court, as a judicial organ, usually fulfils its mission by resolving specific disputes brought to it, it occasionally goes beyond this simple dispute-resolving function and more actively engages in building policies which define, and "constitute," the very polity to which the court belongs, as was seen in Brown v. Board of Education. If this "constitutional adjudication" is an integral function of any domestic high court, could (and should) an international tribunal, in particular the World Trade Organization (WTO) tribunal, also play such a distinctive role? This paper contends that the WTO tribunal has in fact assumed such role by having recently struck down a hoary antidumping practice called "zeroing" which tends to inflate dumping margins and thus is a central vehicle for contingent protection embedded in the antidumping mechanism. The paper observes that the recent proliferation of antidumping measures as a new protectionist instrument has motivated the AB's hermeneutical departure from the past interpretation which had endorsed the practice. This, it argues, is a "constitutional" turn of the WTO which a positivist, inter-governmental mode of thinking, as is prevalent in other international organizations such as the United Nations, cannot fully expound. Critically, this turn originates from bold ideas which envision, and thus "constitute," new institutional meaning and possibilities within the WTO. In other words, the AB's exegesis is anchored firmly by a discernible purpose of cabining trade distortive/restrictive consequences from the use of zeroing which have long been left unchecked. Finally, WTO members, the paper maintains, must preserve the anti-zeroing jurisprudence as constitutional norms in the absence of extraordinary circumstances tantamount to a constitutional amendment. In particular, it must not be a subject of political bargaining in the trade negotiation."

Jean Monnet Working Paper

I'm on this mailing list from the NYU Jean Monnet Center. It looks like it might be kind of interesting to look into "the slow and at times controversial process of 'Europeanizing' the Italian legal system."

Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

We are pleased to announce the online publication of the first paper in the 2008 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

Silvana Sciarra, "Trusting Judges to Deliver Changes: Italy, the EU and Labour Law" (JMWP no. 1/08)

The paper looks into the slow and at times controversial process of 'Europeanising' the Italian legal system, in order to exemplify how adaptation to changes takes place within entire branches of the state administration. Three examples are selected, all within the domain of labour law: state aid illegally granted to support training and work experience contracts; fixed term labour contracts in the public sector; free movement of foreign language assistants. Multi-level regulatory techniques are at the origin of adaptation, geared by institutional and quasi-institutional actors. The main emphasis is on national judges engaging in a dialogue with the ECJ and delivering changes into the legal order as a whole.

We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org.

We just got a half a foot of snow dumped on us last night! Dang, and we were under the delusion that it was spring here already.