Updates and Apologies

I am feeling a little guilty about the lack of substance and insight of late. I won't make excuses other than to say that I've had my head in a recently filed appellate brief, some travel, and other distractions.

I do have some upcoming events that may be of interest. Preparing for these have been part of the distractions:

On October 16, I'll be in NY helping with a CITBA program on courtroom skills. This should be a fun program. We are going to be doing mock-trial segments in front of Judge Wallach who will tell the us all what we did right, did wrong, or could do better.

On October 29, I'll be in Toronto at the IE|Canada meeting to discuss customs valuation. Here are the details on that event.

October 30, 2008 I will be speaking on NAFTA at a program near Chicago sponsored by the World Trade Center of Illinois. Here is a link to the brochure.

Lastly, I'll be back in NY in November for the 15th Judicial Conference of the U.S. Court of International Trade. I'll be moderating a panel on customs law developments. The theme for the event is "Testing the Boundaries of Customs and Trade Litigation." The judicial conference is usually a fun meeting; if fun to you is being in a room completely packed full of customs and trade lawyers.

I have already turned in my Judicial Conference paper. The upshot of the paper is that the Court and lawyers appearing before it might benefit from a more objective test to determine the persuasiveness of WCO materials including the Explanatory Notes and WCO HSC rulings. To fill that gap, I propose applying the same Skidmore analysis the Court currently applies to informal ruling making from Customs. I'm not sure whether that idea advances the ball very far but it does build upon basic administrative law concepts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CAFC Decision in Double Invoicing Case

The Federal Circuit has issued a decision on the merits in United States v. Inn Foods, Inc.  There had been a previous decision on jurisdiction, which was followed by a trial at the Court of International Trade and then this appeal on the substance. The initial issue is whether Inn Foods' invoicing practice amounts to fraud.  Inn Foods had been receiving an invoice from growers in Mexico that had a relatively low sales prices on it.  Subsequent to entry, Inn Foods created a second invoice at something more similar to market value, retaining the original invoice number, and paid at that higher amount.   Superficially, this looks like a standard-issue double-invoicing scheme.  But, in the age of reconciliation, is it really more like a provisional pricing mechanism?  It might have been possible to make that argument had Inn Foods adjusted its entries accordingly.  It didn't and the loss of revenue was approximately $624,000.  Based on testimony and evidence indicating both knowl
Read more

Ninestar and UFLPA Exhaustion

Image
Exhaustion is a key doctrine in administrative law. When applicable, it requires that a party unhappy with an agency’s determination complete the administrative appeal process before turning to the courts for judicial review. Requiring exhaustion typically promotes judicial efficiency by ensuring that disputes are resolved at the agency and, if they are not, that there is a complete record of the agency process. Exhaustion also ensures that the judiciary respects the executive agencies and their expertise.  There are, on the other hand, times when the courts will find that exhaustion is not necessary or appropriate. Such is the case in  Ninestar Corporation et al. v. United States  et al., a decision of the U.S. Court of International Trade.  Ninestar is also interesting because it is one of the first cases in the CIT involving the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, known as UFLPA. In my hiatus from active blogging, I missed the rise of UFLPA as a major compliance topic. So, let's
Read more

Precious Tritium

Image
One thing I have learned as a customs lawyer who does a lot of classification work is that there are millions of odd items moving in international trade the existence of which I am completely ignorant. Such is the case of the gaseous tritium light sources used in, among other things, firearm sights. These things use tritium sealed in a glass that has been coated in phosphor. The radioactive tritium decays, releasing beta particles, which interact with the phosphor causing it to emit light. In other words, it creates light with no external power source. Pretty cool.  Tritium is, of course, a real thing. It is an isotope of hydrogen. We know this from the excellent documentary "Spider-Man." This comes up in relation to the Court of International Trade decision in Trijicon, Inc. v. United States  in which the importer challenged the tariff classification of several versions of the gaseous tritium light sources ("GTLS"). The plaintiff uses them to make gun sights. The
Read more