Gu Kailai Trial and China’s Rule by Law

On Thursday, August 9, 2012, in China’s Anhui province, the murder trial of Gu Kailai, wife of a high-profile former Communist Party official, for the murder of British businessman, Neil Heywood, ended after seven hours. The trial is regarded as the highest profile political trial in decades, Gu Kailai being the wife of disgraced former Communist Party official Bo Xilai.

Heywood, a family friend of Gu and Bo, was found dead in his Chongqing hotel room in November 2011, the morning after dining with Gu. The trial has garnered international attention, with many China law scholars asking what light the proceedings shed on China’s purported pursuit of a law-based society (法治国家).

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Diplomatic Premises Immunity in the Case of Julian Assange

For the past two months, Julian Assange has been staying at Ecuador’s embassy to the United Kingdom to avoid arrest in England, extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, and possible extradition from Sweden to the United States for charges connected with Wikileaks’ disclosure of State Department cables in 2010. The UK has demanded that Ecuador hand over Assange, but today Ecuador officially refused. In response, British officials have threatened to suspend the embassy’s diplomatic immunity so that they can enter the embassy grounds and make the arrest.

The dispute raises a question that Britain has encountered before. In 1984, during an anti-Gaddafi demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in London, someone inside the embassy shot and killed a British law enforcement officer who was policing the protest near the embassy grounds. The British government, however, had no legal means of arresting the shooter. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations had established that the premises of a diplomatic mission “shall be inviolable,” that “agents of [a] receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission,” and that the premises “shall be immune from search . . . .” Libya, moreover, refused to allow entry and search. This dissatisfying result eventually led Parliament to pass a law called the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act of 1987.

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U.S. Healthcare Reform Has Just Begun

I wrote here last March 26 about the issues of the anticipated Supreme Court opinion on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Around the time the decision was announced, it seemed redundant to comment when a barrage of words — first, predictive punditry, then, delight, outrage, and more punditry about the “real” future of U.S. Health care – poured from every news outlet and policy shop that exists to examine the health care industry and its regulation.

In August 2012, implementation is underway, complex and sometimes perplexing. And many problems are not addressed at all.

To recap: On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court announced its rulings on the constitutionality of the ACA. Most provisions of the law, including the individual mandate, were upheld. One important provision, requiring states to adopt the Medicaid expansion, was struck down. States could refuse to expand their Medicaid benefits and still receive federal funds that` pay at least 50% of the cost of their existing health care program for the poor. Several states have refused the expansion, although the federal government provides 100% of costs until 2020. The objective justification is that such a federal “hook” is eventually reduced, other incremental expansion is likely to follow, and once states begin to accept the funds it is virtually impossible, politically and practically, to stop.

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