Debarments under the federal government procurement system are not supposed to punish but only to protect the public interest; they are unconcerned with past misconduct, only guarding the government from dealing with contractors who are not presently responsible. Although the system fancies...

Defense offsets are a form of countertrade whereby arms importing countries demand some form of compensation for the lost opportunity for domestic production. Both the United States and the European Union (EU) maintain that offsets are economically inefficient and trade distorting. Accordingly,...

This article is a much shorter version of the article I wrote for the Public Contract Law Journal challenging the received opinion on the inefficiency of defense offsets. It was republished in the NCMA's December 2015 issue of Contract Management

Offsets are a form of countertrade associated with the defense industry. It has been the United States’ position since 1990 that they are “economically inefficient and trade distorting.” Free traders are rallying for a ban on these grounds. Data are scarce, but anecdotal evidence suggests...

Freer trade in transatlantic public procurement will be possible only if greater understanding of the two systems is achieved. One of the fundamental differences between the two is their composition of purchases: whereas in U.S. federal procurement 70-80% of purchases are military, defense...

The President’s 2018 National Defense Strategy warns that the Department of Defense (DoD) is losing its technological edge. This isn’t new. Under the last two administrations, the DoD has sought to regain the lead by gaining dominance in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and...

In several strategy documents, the Department of Defense has suggested that it may experiment with public-private partnerships (P3s) as catalysts for innovation. This policy is misguided. P3s may prove especially disappointing if they are merely a neologism for a continuation of the same old...

This book review considers Alec MacGillis's Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-click America. Though I have several complaints with the book, I argue that it is valuable reading for judge advocates (my audience) for at least three reasons. First, it helps us to understand better the working...

This essay was written for inclusion in a volume about various European nations’ sources of authority and principles of procurement law (Les Principes des Contrats Publics en Europe, edited by Stephane de La Rosa and Patricia Valcarcel). It is not, however, an essay on comparative law. Rather,...

Whether EU public procurement law guarantees that suppliers hailing from third countries can bring challenge procedures in Member States forums is a disputed matter. This piece will not attempt to answer that question. It considers a narrower issue. As the title indicates, it presents only...