Harlan G. Cohen
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harlangcohen.bsky.social
Harlan G. Cohen
@harlangcohen.bsky.social
7.8K followers 610 following 340 posts
Professor at Fordham Law School. Proprietor of "a cultural investigation agency... a kind of private eye of learning."
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harlangcohen.bsky.social
November 14, 2025 at 2:56 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
September 22, 2025 at 5:24 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
This roundtable on "International Economic Law as Legal Ordering" at #SIEL2025 with Zohra Ahmed, @gmssngr.bsky.social, and @ntinatzouvala.bsky.social, chaired by Thomas Cottier, was as entirely much fun as it looks.
July 11, 2025 at 7:28 AM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Outbound Investment Restrictions and International Law's Challenge Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper Forthcoming 49 Seattle U. L. Rev. _ (forthcoming) 35 Pages Posted: 27 May 2025 Harlan Grant Cohen Fordham University School of Law Date Written: May 23, 2025 Abstract The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the advancement of another. And in so doing, the Outbound Investment Rule reveals a broader global shift to geoeconomic competition that existing international economic law rules are ill-suited to manage. New rules are needed to minimize and manage the inevitable conflicts.
May 27, 2025 at 12:18 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Honored to share the stage Friday with Marco Basile, Diane Orentlicher, Jean Claudy Pierre, and Hina Shamsi to discuss the legacy of 400 years of international law and lawyering at the #ASILAM
April 21, 2025 at 2:06 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
April 17, 2025 at 10:30 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
"a scrap of paper"
Mr. Lutnick called Mr. LeBlanc after the leaders had spoken on Feb. 3, and issued a devastating message, according to several people familiar with the call: Mr. Trump, he said, had come to realize that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a slew of agreements and treaties that were easy to abandon. Mr. Trump was interested in doing just that, Mr. Lutnick said.
March 7, 2025 at 12:02 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Full statement: www.asil.org/sites/defaul...
February 13, 2025 at 10:32 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
It is the problem of the multiplicity of meaning - the fact that never only one but always many worlds are created by the too fertile forces of jurisgenesis - that leads at once to the imperial virtues and the imperial mode of world maintenance. Maintaining the world is no small matter and requires no less energy than creating it. Let loose, unfettered, the worlds created would be unstable and sectarian in their social organization, dissociative and incoherent in their discourse, wary and violent in their interactions. The sober imperial mode of world maintenance holds the mirror of critical objectivity to meaning, imposes the discipline of institutional justice upon norms, and places the constraint of peace on the void at which strong bonds cease.
January 9, 2025 at 9:56 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
We were just there! It's amazing.
January 5, 2025 at 2:16 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
The chapter unfurls three common stories we tell about custom - negotiated law, legislated law, and adjudicated law - and shows how each produces different interpretations and, in turn, fights over rules re self-defense against non-state actors, immunity for jus cogens violations, or about FET.2/
Justification-based Sources of International Law: Summary table describing underlying logic, justification, examples, and notions of coherence implied by Negotiated Law, Legislated Law, and Adjudicated Law, respectively.
November 27, 2024 at 1:23 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
In the article, I argue that our era of geoeconomic competition needs rules to govern economic statecraft - rules on notice, duration, proportionality, harm minimization, compensation, etc. - that will not be developed through adjudication.2/
The global economy is increasingly being weaponized. Citing security concerns from traditional defense to economic competitiveness, health emergency, and climate crisis, states are turning to sanctions, tariffs, export controls, investment screening, and subsidies. But while economic statecraft is becoming common, rules remain scarce. Questions about notice, duration, proportionality, harm minimization, compensation, retaliation and/or rebalancing lack clear answers and seem almost theoretical. Once, we might have hoped the WTO would play a role in developing such rules. But in the absence of an Appellate Body and in the face of state rejections of review, WTO deliberative processes have ground to a halt. This essay argues for a new approach, focused less on adjudicating security disputes than on developing best practices for invoking and using trade security measures. It explains why a new approach is necessary, detailing both how the WTO’s deliberative engine broke down and why dispu
March 15, 2024 at 1:35 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Security or economic competition? You decide.
February 29, 2024 at 2:20 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
I guess it's official: www.fordham.edu/school-of-la...

Come find me!
January 16, 2024 at 5:10 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
ICYMI:
November 29, 2023 at 4:28 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Are you a JD, LLM or SJD student passionate about International Economic Law? Fancy getting published + winning a cash prize? Georgetown Law + its Journal of International Law (GJIL) are seeking novel & innovative submissions from anywhere for its Greenwald Writing Competition.
November 28, 2023 at 4:29 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Wondering if reading national security statutes broadly and entrusting everything to your national security advisor is necessarily a good precedent....
November 27, 2023 at 7:48 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Congratulations @ezgiyildiz.bsky.social and Nico! An extraordinary, rich, thoughtful, and thought-provoking book: global.oup.com/academic/pro...
November 17, 2023 at 4:29 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Congratulations @monapaulsen.bsky.social!
November 17, 2023 at 1:00 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Preach!
This ‘theoretical pluralism’ can even be embraced at the individual level, so one may be ‘a democratic constructivist in the morning, a materialist skeptic of legal doctrine in the afternoon, and, perhaps, a more internal student of doctrine in the evening, without becoming any of these and, more important, without contradicting oneself in a pernicious way’
November 15, 2023 at 3:21 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Just leaving this here for those thinking about how the boundaries of "national security" and defense may be shifting:
November 1, 2023 at 10:02 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
To related ends, if one hasn't seen it, an example of what can be, from students at University of Ottawa Faculty of Law:
November 1, 2023 at 8:22 PM
harlangcohen.bsky.social
Just found cleaning my office: state of law journal submissions pre expresso/scholastica. Note specific requirements gleaned from journal websites: hardcopy, single-spaced, double-spaced, paper-clip, binder-clip, etc. My wife & I spent a whole romantic weekend at the post office weighing envelopes.
October 26, 2023 at 9:07 PM