Customs Law

I live near Chicago and spent a significant portion of my adult life living or working in the city. There is an increasingly rare kind of Chicagoan that represents the accent many Americans associate with the city. That accent is often, and incorrectly, summarized as the "Dees and dems and dose." It has been used as a tool of sketch comedy for ages. Including in Bill Swerski's Super Fans. I am reminded of the Super Fans because I just re-read DIS Vantage LLC v. United States . Every time I see "DIS Vintage," the 12-year old idiot that inhabits a portion of my brain insists on saying "Dat's not vintage, Dis vintage."  The serious question presented in this case is the classification of bales of used apparel. We initially discussed this case last year in this post . The question left to be decided is whether the merchandise is commingled and, therefore, subject to the highest rate of duty applicable to merchandise present in the mixture.  It is worth

 As we discussed in the last post , not a lot happens in Customs Law Land that has a direct impact on the livelihood of individuals. Usually, we are dealing with refunds or duties owed by companies. One area that does impact individuals is appeals of denied Trade Adjustment Assistance, which is the federal program that provides financial and other assistance to workers who are "separated from employment" due to trade. In other words, TAA addresses those who are on the short end of the globalization stick. TAA goes back to the Kennedy Administration and is the bargain we make with workers. Economists (notwithstanding Peter Navarro) largely agree that globalization leverages local comparative advantages to generate a net economic benefit. But, everyone can also see that not every individual within the economy realizes benefits from globalization. TAA helps those individuals "adjust" through enhanced unemployment benefits, training, and relocation. It is not a perfect

 The Yiddish word rachmones  means compassion, mercy, or pity. It occasionally sneaks into legal discussions in cases where there is no clear legal right to relief but the applicant appears to be deserving of compassion or mercy. I remember first coming across this usage when reading Chutzpah , the memoire of the now troubling Alan Dershowitz in which he conveyed the story of working as a clerk for Judge David Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. According to Dershowitz, when a criminal defendant deserved compassion but had no strictly legal remedy, Judge Bazelon would request that his clerk find some basis on which to draft a "writ of rachmones." Dershowitz , Chutzpah , 58-59 (1992).  LEXIS tells me that Judge Berle Schiller of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania used the same phrase in a 2020 opinion involving a criminal defendant who had been sentenced to prison for 15 years for securing home loans by fraudulent ap

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