Economist Mark J. Perry has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal observing that US manufacturing is in nowhere near the dire straits that many of us (me included, as well as my international business transactions law students, to whom I put the question of US versus China manufacturing) have tended to assume. I’m not […]
Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson
The Heinlein Biography
Great minds think alike. A quick note further to Brother Ilya’s post below on Robert Heinlein’s encounter with political ignorance in his failed campaign for California state legislature back in the 1930s, before he took up science fiction writing. I have been reading the Heinlein biography slowly, a couple of pages on my Kindle a […]
Guantanamo Detainees, What Next?
My home institution, Washington College of Law, American University, will be putting on an important lunchtime program on Friday, February 18,12-2 pm, on the vexed question of what happens next for the Guantanamo detainees. I am committed to another program that day, so I won’t be attending, but this program has a stellar lineup of commenters. […]
Valentine’s Day
and may lovers and sweethearts everywhere make the most of it. I’d just like to add the caution, on the strength of my Beloved’s and my Valentine’s excursion yesterday … Black Swan is not, repeat not, a Valentine’s Day movie! (Feel free to offer best and worst Valentine’s Day movies, past and current, in the […]
The Shift in Focus from Proportionality to Necessity in the Law of War, and the Incentives Created by the Shift from Equality of Legal Obligation to “Capabilities”
More than one participant in the Texas International Law Journal discussion that I posted on earlier (including leading scholars who do not necessarily share some other important views on the laws of war) broadly agreed that the locus of discussion in law of armed conflict issues, those issues on the avant garde margin, as it […]
The Model Air and Missile Warfare Manual
I’ve been privileged the last couple of days to be in Austin at the annual symposium of the Texas International Law Journal, which this year is a consideration of the model “Air and Missile Warfare Manual.” The model manual is the product of an expert group midwifed by the Harvard Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research […]
I Gave Blood Today
… at UVA Law School, and that makes me very cool. I was on a machine I had never been on before, something that takes out the red blood cells and then puts the plasma back – I was not quite sure how it worked, but it seemed to be recirculating the yellowish plasma back […]
Al Warafi: A Facetious Suggestion on How to Address the Question of Taliban Medics
The Lawfare blog has reported on the oral argument in the Al Warafi case in the DC Circuit. Reduced to the bare essence, Al Warafi is a detainee at Guantanamo appealing a negative habeas decision. A core issue is whether he was a medic “exclusively engaged” in medical activities with the Taliban and for that […]
The Superbowl and Me
… I have to double-down on Co-Conspirator Sasha’s Superbowl post. I seem to lack the spectator sports gene. I’ll spend a couple of hours working out today, but, well, I can’t actually remember how football is scored. Beloved Daughter is headed over to a friend’s house to watch the game with a Real Family whose […]
Robert Chesney on Targeting Al-Awlaqi, and My Comment on Targeting for Incitement to Violence
Robert Chesney (University of Texas law school and the indispensable Lawfare blog) has posted an important draft paper on the law surrounding the targeting of Anwar Al-Awlaki, the Yemini-American radical Islamist cleric in hiding presumably in Yemen. It is still in draft form (to appear in final form in the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law), […]
Sovereignty Watch: Vatican Refuses Service of Process in Abuse Case
By Kenneth Anderson on February 3, 2011 6:03 pm in Religion, Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that the Vatican has refused service of process in a widely-followed priest child abuse case. The Vatican has refused service of a federal lawsuit over its handling of the notorious sex offender Father Lawrence Murphy – a move that could delay the Milwaukee lawsuit for months if not years, victims’ advocates […]
The Hearing on the Constitutionality of the Health Care Law
I watched the C-span coverage of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the constitutionality of the health care law, and I was impressed with the level of discussion and its seriousness, on the part of the Senators and the professors (mostly) who served as witnesses. It’s true I was at the gym and operating on […]
What Is Neoconservatism? Why Fukuyama’s 2006 Book Is Worth Re-Visiting
I don’t have any knowledge of Egypt, and won’t comment, but one of the related issues that is back on the table is neoconservative foreign policy. A few years ago I wrote a review-essay on that topic, Goodbye to All That: A Requiem for Neoconservatism, for my school’s international law journal. It reviews two books […]
NYT Room for Debate Blog on Whether the Financial Crisis Was Avoidable
The New York Times Room for Debate Blog, where various Conspirators have served as discussants one time or another, has a very interesting discussion on whether and in what respects the financial crisis might have been avoided. It’s a good short read. From the introduction: Last week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, after reviewing thousands […]
Assumptions, Assumptions …
It turns out (fixing dinner tonight in my otherwise furnished and lovely temporary apartment here at the Very Great UVA Law School, where I am visiting for the semester, and where my colleagues this term have greeted me with warmth and cordiality) that I should not have … assumed the can opener.