Ellington

More NAFTA woes ... New York Times reports today: "Any Canadian or Mexican business that contends it has been treated unjustly by the American judicial system can file a similar claim. American businesses with similar complaints about Canadian or Mexican court judgments can do the same. Under the Nafta agreement the government whose court system is challenged is responsible for awards by the tribunals. 'This is the biggest threat to United States judicial independence that no one has heard of and even fewer people understand,' said John D. Echeverria, a law professor at Georgetown University.

"In the Massachusetts case, brought by Mondev International, the Nafta tribunal decided in 2002 that the Massachusetts courts had not violated international law. But in a separate pending case, brought by a Canadian company challenging the largest jury verdict in Mississippi history, a different Nafta tribunal offered a harsh assessment of Mississippi justice.

"'The whole trial and its resultant verdict," the three-judge tribunal ruled last summer, "were clearly improper and discreditable and cannot be squared with minimum standards of international law and equitable treatment.'"