Author Archive | Eric Posner

Which are the best state high courts? It depends on what you mean by

Today, the European Court of Justice delivered an opinion in the important case of Yassin Abdullah Kadi and Al Barakaat International Foundation v Council and Commission (a summary is here). The Security Council put Kadi on its list of suspected financiers of Al Qaida and the Council of the European Union froze his assets, as […]

The only real question about the planned “surge” in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional. — Paul Krugman, NYT, 1/8/07 There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq. — NYT Editorial, 1/11/07 What anyone in Congress with half a brain […]

Numerous interesting comments on previous posts expressed every possible theory. The topic is complicated, but here are a few brief responses: Bigger (in the sense of population size, not land area) is better, because of economies of scale. Imagine that a country builds an expensive asteroid warning system that protects the territory from asteroids. The […]

a pair of darling twins, though a bit on the small side (populations 70,000 and 250,000 respectively), and perhaps not with a terribly appealing prognosis. In fact, one might wonder whether they have really been born. Russia has recognized them as independent states; the rest of the world considers them provinces of Georgia. They do […]

The ICC was created in 1998 to try people who commit international crimes, including war crimes and genocide, when domestic institutions fail to do so. The United States was roundly criticized for wanting to make the Court a tool of the Security Council, to be set up when and only when its members could agree […]

Not China; not the United States. The gold medal for interstate warfare was snatched up by Russia, and that one is worth more than all the others combined! Poor China; it spent $100 million on the opening ceremony alone and walked away with just a bunch of medallions; for a lot less, Russia got a […]

Thanks to Eugene for inviting me to join this blog. Let me start with a prediction. When historians write about the post-cold war era, which began in 1989, the date of its termination will not be 9/11/2001, as has been frequently claimed, but 8/7/2008, when Georgian forces attacked separatists in South Ossetia and Russia responded […]

Rather than just complaining (as I’ve noted, justifiably) about its rhetoric, Timothy Burke is thinking carefully about the substantive point of the historians’ letter to the media about Michelle Malkin’s “In Defense of Internment.” He attributes Malkin’s success in drawing uncritical attention from the major media to two things: (a) her saying something contrarian about […]

Michelle Malkin’s revisionist telling of the story of the Japanese American internment turns crucially on one supposed military fact: Franklin Roosevelt and his top military brass feared a Japanese assault on the West Coast. This, she claims, rather than prejudice, panic, or economic or political pressure, explained their decision to uproot American citizens of Japanese […]

According to Vox Day, any military historian worth his or her salt could tell you that the top military brass back in early 1942 knew that a full-blown Japanese assault on the U.S. mainland was inconceivable–and that their reliance on that rationale for evicting Japanese Americans from the West Coast was therefore bogus. I’m no […]

A student points me to this funny story at the Onion.

Thanks, as always, to Eugene for the invitation to guest-blog here again. It’s always a pleasure. Yesterday Eugene critiqued a letter I signed in which a group of historians and researchers (including me) complained of the decision made by many TV and radio shows to present, without opposition, Michelle Malkin’s revisionist account of the Japanese […]

My time here at the Volokh Conspiracy is short. Eugene invited me to guest blog yesterday and today; at midnight I turn into a pumpkin and must return to my home at IsThatLegal. I always appreciate and enjoy the chance to guest-blog over here. I know I’ve been pretty, uh, prolific this time around, and […]

Robinson ends where I began, with some comments about Michelle’s method: Now that I have covered Malkin’s central arguments as fallacious, I would like to step back and look at the work as a whole. I do appreciate the author’s willingness to take an unorthodox position, and it is good to put the wartime treatment […]