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Singer

Elias Howe certainly played a key role in the Sewing Machine War in the 1850s. An article in the August 1867 edition of The Galaxy magazine reported that

Despite the Old World efforts at inventing a sewing machine (discussed in Part 1), it was a series of American inventors, working in the 1840s and 1850s, who succeeded in threading the needle in creating the first practical sewing machine. Confirming Alex de Tocqueville

Today, the sewing machine would hardly be considered a complex invention. In our high-tech world in which pharmaceutical companies now design and construct therapeutic drugs from the protein up, or Apple Computer makes it possible to check email, update one

I first want to thank Eugene for inviting me to blog on the invention and commercialization of the sewing machine in the antebellum era. I

Over at OpinioJuris, Duncan Hollis asks whether captured pirates might be entitled to the protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. I address the problems posed by the Geneva conventions to piracy prosecutions in my forthcoming essay, pg. 21-27. Forget Article 3, I wrote; the pirates have a weak but colorable claim to […]

The attention focused on the arraignment yesterday of the surviving Alabama pirate in federal court yesterday should not divert attention from the absolute failure of Western efforts against Somali piracy. The situation is not likely to improve, given the anti-piracy measures dramatically promised by the Obama Administration. (In my too-slowly-forthcoming but particularly timely essay,

The pirate captured by the Navy last week in the rescue of the Maersk Alabama will apparently be prosecuted in federal court in New York. It will be a fascinating case (if he doesn’t plead guilty): perhaps the first piracy prosecution in the United States since the late 19th century, in the first prosecution of […]

A professor of piracy often deals with eye-patch and hook jokes. Many people who find this academic specialty intriguing lose interests when they learn that modern pirates wear jeans, tee-shirts and flip-flops, or when they

The very pirates who terrorized the crew of the Maersk Alabama may have been caught and released by the U.S. or navies in the past year. Given the robust military reaction to the seizure of an American vessel, most people would be surprised to learn that the response of the United States and other nations […]

In answer to Dave Kopel’s bleg below, there are as far as I am aware no international legal restrictions to crews resisting pirates. A ship is governed by the laws of the flag state, and the relevant regulations would come from there. However, the crew has no incentive to resist. The crews are not military […]

In my essay,

My last post in this discussion is on lobbying and campaign money, topics discussed in Chapters 8 through 11 of my book. Chapter 8 is titled Bagmen in Black Tie or Professional Intermediaries: the Growth of the Lobbying Industry and Prospects for Reform. Here I point out that the present success of the lobbying industry […]

I face the curious accusation that I oppose torture in order to sell copies of my book. At most eight pages (129-134 and 137-141) of the book deal with the torture memos. Nobody should pay $55 (probably the best price for my book on line) in order to hear from me a new and insightful […]

My criticism of legal arguments justifying torture seems to have created much controversy this week. I recognize that citation to international law and the views of a former head of the Office of Legal Counsel does not conclusively establish the case against torture. Neither do the views of Senator John McCain, a man who experienced […]