Steven Hayward, author of the two-volume history The Age of Reagan (The Fall of the Old Liberal Order 1964-1980 and The Conseervative Counterrevolution 1980-1989), has a very interesting article in the Washington Post on the state of the cosnervative movement, “Is Conservatism Brain Dead?” Here’s a brief taste: During the glory days of the conservative […]
Archive | October, 2009
My Curmudgeonly Take on the Olympics
Every four years, I have to hear far, far more about the Olympics than I care to. It’s even worse when the Olympics are held in the U.S., so I’m glad they will be held in Rio and not Chicago in 2016.
What People Are Searching For
Google Analytics reports that we’ve had 18 visitors in the past few days via Google searches for todd zywicki god.
Searches for Guns at the Home of a Suspect’s Family Member:
The Ninth Circuit has just agreed to rehear Millender v. County of Los Angeles en banc; here’s what I blogged about the case when the panel opinion came out in May: Bowen was a felon and likely a gang member who had apparently committed a serious gun crime (shooting at the car of his girlfriend, […]
Globally Managing American Speech?
By Kenneth Anderson on October 2, 2009 10:19 am in Constitutional Theory, Freedom of Speech, International Law, Politics, Religion and the Law
I read with great interest Eugene’s post below on the Obama administration, free speech, and human rights. As it happens, I’m trying to finish up a manuscript on the UN and “values” at this very moment. Here are a couple of observations that I don’t propose to defend here; I throw them out unsupported, and I’ll try to go back and add something else later.
This whole process of “engagement” on an issue like free speech by the US at the HRC or anywhere else in the international system is a mistake from the beginning. Among the many reasons is, first, that a process like that of the HRC is designed to lead to consensus, which in practice will mean some kind of compromise. But the whole point of freedom of speech under the First Amendment is that it is not open to compromise, and certainly not in the sense of elaborating standards from the outside for a sovereign people who govern themselves under a constitution.
Even to “engage” in the process, as a consequence, leads to tears no matter where it goes. A compromise on the issue will inevitably mean that the first amendment is weakened in its substantive American understanding. If the US engages in the process, however, but then does not accept the result, then it is understandably accused of negotiating in bad faith.
But that’s the consequence of a policy of “always, or nearly always, engage” with the UN or with international institutions. There are certain institutions in which the US should always engage; the Security Council is one of them. There are certain institutions or processes with which it should never engage and actively seek to undermine; Durban I and II come to mind. The HRC is another institution with which engagement is a mistake, and an obvious one. The decision to engage or not engage is one that by itself is an exercise in political capital. I admit to finding unpersuasive the position of some (HRW made these arguments around Durban, but it is a fairly common trope) that
(a) the US should always engage with UN institutions because engagement is an important symbolic act that shows US commitment to international institutions and
(b) the US should not be concerned about always engaging with institutions or processes at the UN, because these are “merely” symbolic processes and one can always walk out, because as a realist matter no one can “make” the US do anything it doesn’t want.
This is looking to have it both ways. Which is it to be? Does symbolic engagement matter or doesn’t it?
Why Legal Books Are Likely To Go Electronic (Pretty Soon)
The paper book is a familiar and generally well-loved technology. It also has advantages over e-readers that might endure for many years. The main ones have to do with how much material one can see at once, without flipping a page or clicking a button. Paper books still let people see more text, on two […]
“The Future of Books Related to the Law?”
That’s the title of a forthcoming Foreword that I was invited to write for the next Michigan Law Review Books Related to the Law issue. The issue itself mostly consists of book reviews, but the Forewords are generally on broader subjects related to legal books or legal scholarship. I thought I’d serialize the article here […]
Service of Process Via Twitter,
in England: In a ruling on Thursday, a judge in London said that an anonymous Twitter user accused of impersonating a right-wing blogger should cease their activities and reveal their identity to the court. Without any other way of contacting the individual in question, however, the judge agreed that the best way to serve the […]
Shameless David Brooks
According to Brooks, [the influence of] talk radio hosts [is] to blame for the Republican Party’s decline; and not, say, the Iraq War and the GOP’s Bush era Big Government agenda. I wonder if this assignment of blame has anything to do with the fact that Brooks was one of the leading cheerleaders for just […]
Bipartisan blogger consensus: Our side’s Congress Leadership is Mediocre. Big split on Afghanistan
In this week’s National Journal poll, the political bloggers were asked to grade the Congressional leadership. Left-leaning bloggers were asked to grade the Democrats, and Right-leaners were asked the grade the Republicans. The Left gave the Democrats a C. The Right gave the Republicans a C+. I gave the Republicans a B, and wrote “Doing a […]
Do Wise Latinas Make Better Judges Than White Men?
In response to the debate over the Sotomayor nomination, three coauthors and I tried to answer this question empirically (however, focusing on gender, not on race). A brief description of our findings is here; our working paper is here.
Meredith Whitney: The Credit Crunch Continues
Bank Analyst Meredith Whitney in the Wall Street Journal: Anyone counting on a meaningful economic recovery will be greatly disappointed. How do I know? I follow credit, and credit is contracting. Access to credit is being denied at an accelerating pace. Large, well-capitalized companies have no problem finding credit. Small businesses, on the other hand, […]
“Cyberbullying Bill Gets Chilly Reception”
Some folks say that Congress will do anything that resonates with the public, and that Congress doesn’t care about the Constitution — especially if the Constitution gets in the way of “protecting the children.” If you think that, you should read this report about Wednesday’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the proposed Megan Meier Cyberbullying […]
Is the Obama Administration Supporting Calls to Outlaw Supposed Hate Speech?
That’s what it looks like, with this Joint U.S./Egypt draft U.N. Human Rights Council resolution (dated Sept. 2009). The resolution generally seems to be an attempt to urge more protection for free speech throughout the world, and some praise it for that; moreover, it lacks the exception for “defamation of religion” that some Muslim countries […]
Nanny of the Month (September 2009):
Reason TV says it’s the Alabama Supreme Court, “for upholding a state law that bans the selling of ‘any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.’” But I’d say that it was the Alabama Legislature that was the real nanny there.