One further comment, while I’m thinking of Chris Caldwell. He is, after all, a reminder that there are journalists who are much smarter, intellectual, and certainly better read than most academics, including me. We had lunch recently, while he was working on his euro-zone essay. I was then ordering books for my spring law and […]
Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson
The Political Economy of the Euro Crisis
Chris Caldwell, of the Weekly Standard and the Financial Times, took up Western Europe as his journalist beat at a time, in the 1990s, when all the cool kids were off doing Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Balkans. Coverage of Continental Western Europe by newspapers like the Times meant a cushy assignment […]
Judge Dismisses Al-Aulaqi Targeted Killing Case
By Kenneth Anderson on December 7, 2010 11:13 am in Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Presswires are reporting that Judge John Bates has dismissed the case which the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights sought to bring on behalf of Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s father, contesting the ability of the President to target an American citizen hiding abroad in Yemen who the government says is a targetable participant in a terrorist […]
Is the Microbe Half Empty or Half Full of Arsenic?
After reading the front page accounts in three leading newspapers of the microbe that started out as a critter in Mono Lake and then got force-fed, like a goose for its liver, on arsenic replacing phosphorous, I remain unclear as to whether we have evidence of a parallel evolutionary tree or simply a highly selected […]
Extradition, Espionage Prosecutions, etc., for Assange Discussed at Opinio Juris
Kevin Jon Heller, Roger Alford, Julian Ku, and Peter Spiro – who represent a wide range of political and legal views – offer up analyses of legal questions surrounding Wikileaks and Assange over at the international law blog Opinio Juris. The posts at OJ are thoughtful and legally informed, and the comments are well worth […]
Good Explanations of the Eurozone Crisis
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times each have good, comprehensible explanations of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis on the front pages today. (The Journal has a particularly useful graphic that breaks out each country.)
My One Paragraph Assessment of Dodd-Frank
While I wait for David Skeel and William Cowan’s new book on the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill to appear next month (The New Financial Deal), I have tried to make my own assessment of what the bill means in the aggregate. In order to do this, I have read the bill in its entirety twice. The […]
Cancun and Copenhagen, and Carbon as Pure Regulatory Object
By Kenneth Anderson on November 29, 2010 11:05 am in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, Economy, Environment, International Law
Co-Conspirator Jonathan has already remarked below on the seeming collapse of the media-academic-NGO-international organization-et al. global warming coalition in-between last year’s Copenhagen meeting and this year’s much-subdued Cancun event. I broadly agree with Jonathan, and with Margaret Wente, on whom he comments, on the policy merits. I also think the right approach to climate change […]
Wikileaks and the Demise of the Diplomatic Cable
I think my Opinio Juris co-blogger Peter Spiro is probably right that one of the collateral consequences of Wikileaks is the demise, or anyway acceleration toward the demise, of the traditional diplomatic cable. But this episode will surely make cables look less attractive still. It’s one thing to understand that your work will come to […]
Share, Oh Readers, My Shock and Dismay …
To find myself watching the Michael Crichton 1995 movie, Congo, with Beloved Wife – which is not a bad movie and I’m a fan of the late MC, may he rest in peace, but – contemplate my shock and dismay to see the film describe the laboratory as being at Berkeley, and then all the shots […]
Addendum to the Bankruptcy for States (David Skeel) Post
I stuck this in as an update to the David Skeel post below, but I think it is a sufficiently different point that it warrants its own post. (And thanks to Glenn for the link.) So: Co-Conspirator Todd notes the Stanford Law School conference on the Constitution and the Financial Crisis, at which both he […]
David Skeel on Bankruptcy for States
UPenn law professor and corporate finance and bankruptcy specialist David Skeel has an important article in this week’s Weekly Standard talking about the possibility and utility of bankruptcy for states. The article argues first that a new chapter for states in the Federal bankruptcy statute would be constitutional, and then turns to argue, second, that […]
What Law Will Govern Space Tourism?
Over at Opinio Juris, a scholarly exchange on the question of space tourism and the law that would underlie it. Steven Freeland, commenting on his own article in the Melbourne Journal of International Law, Frans G. von der Dunk responding, and Freeland’s final comments. Meanwhile, I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving; we had family […]
Counterinsurgency Then and Now
By Kenneth Anderson on November 21, 2010 10:21 pm in Afghanistan, Uncategorized, War and Armed Conflict
Over at SSRN, I have posted up a very old article by Jean-Marie Simon and me, Permanent Counterinsurgency in Guatemala. It appeared in 1987 in the critical theory journal Telos (No. 73, Fall 1987, 9-46). Here is the abstract, which includes a bit of information on why I have posted it up now: This 1987 […]
Theatre of Capitalism and Anti-Capitalism?
In my last post, on microfinance, I mentioned toward the end a play by Bertolt Brecht, The Good Person of Szechuan. In it, a young woman inherits a small shop in a village, but because of her generous heart, nearly runs it into the ground because she can’t say no to anyone. So she goes […]