The text of President Obama’s Iraq speech from last night is here. The parts that most interested me were, first, the idea of ‘time to turn the page’. Merely my view, of course, but it seems to me (along with practically all the other critics of the speech, to be sure) an ambiguous and ambivalent […]
Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson
Systemic Risk, the Fed, and ‘Regulatory Casuistry’
With an eye to Ben Bernanke’s upcoming testimony to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission during the two days of hearings on “too big to fail” – in other words, systemic risk – the WSJ has an editorial in today’s paper raising various questions about the basis on which the Fed, the FDIC, and other agencies […]
Elections 2010 and 2012?
This is a purely political horseracing question, but I keep thinking about it every time I read another article talking about the 2010 elections. Much of the commentary on the 2010 election seems to take for granted that a big Republican win in Congressional elections in 2010 presages the trend for the 2012 Presidential election. […]
Converse and Obverse
Okay, now I can’t get my brain around it. In my post below, I wondered about converse versus obverse. Can someone do two things for me, in the language usage category. First, give me a clear definition of the distinction between the two. Second, and harder, I believe but maybe am wrong … give me […]
Anis Shivani on University Presses
My Washington College of Law colleague Robert Tsai points me to an interesting Huffington Post article by Anis Shivani on new directions for university presses. I have a somewhat more critical take on this, in the sense of an interest in the economic and business models driving the presses as they move in different directions. […]
Query re University Administrative Bloat
CoConspirator Todd’s post on the growth of administrative staff at universities raises a further question for me. Considered as a public choice/incentives question, what are the rational incentives of university administrators regarding faculty tenure? We have had some interesting discussions here at VC on the policy considerations on tenure – I’ll weigh in on them […]
Can the Wikileaks Founder Be Prosecuted for Espionage by the US?
Julian Ku says the answer is yes, under US domestic statutes … if the US can catch him. The “him” in question is Julian Assange, an Australian living in Sweden. (The Swedish prosecutor has withdrawn its unrelated rape charge against Assange in apparent embarrassment, and Assange in turn has accused the prosecutor of possibly having […]
More Piracy Blogging at Opinio Juris
Chief Conspirator Eugene mentioned the dismissal of the piracy case (US v Said) in US district court yesterday, along with some important initial commentary by piracy law expert (i.e., universal jurisdiction law expert) Eugene Kontorovich. Over at the international law blog Opinio Juris, Julian Ku and David Glazier comment further. Like Eugene, they think the […]
Work, Compensation, and Retirement Age: Lessons from the Professors
The NYT Room for Debate blog, via TaxProf Blog, has a debate among professors over the effects of tenure, a good job in both working conditions and compensation, and no mandatory retirement age. Here is how the Times sets up the debate among the professors (not specifically law professors): If tenured professors are retiring later, […]
My Wandering Summer Reading
Although only mid-August, school will be starting up for me only too soon … during the summer months, I make a vow (at best half kept most years) to spend two hours a day reading stuff, anything that is not strictly driven by a current writing project. I’ve found that if I can persuade myself […]
Divorce Insurance
The New York Times Bucks Blog (of August 6, 2010) has a fascinating article by Jennifer Saranow Schultz on the first-ever offering in the United States of divorce insurance, the WedLock policy issued by a start up insurance company in North Carolina, Safeguard Guaranty Corp. Markets in everything, etc. The casualty insurance is designed to […]
Larry Ribstein Comments on Lawyerly Competitive Advantage
There are a couple of academic business law blogs I read regularly – particularly The Conglomerate and Truth on the Market. So I was flattered to see that Larry Ribstein, at Truth on the Market, put up a short comment on a short essay of mine that appeared last semester in my school’s short-form essay […]
“Labored”
Eugene has given me the language usage bug. I happened to see this in an article from a UK website called Orange. Here’s the usage that intrigued me: Strangely, three months before the birth of Guangchun, his family’s sow also labored a weird shaped piglet, which had eight legs, two mouths and four ears. I […]
God’s Algorithm
AFP, via Yahoo, reports that a team of researchers using assistance from Google has established God’s Algorithm for the Rubik’s Cube. The coolness of this cannot be doubted. The Rubik’s Cube can always be solved from any position in twenty moves or fewer. An international team of researchers … has found every way the popular […]
Today Is 61st Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949
By Kenneth Anderson on August 12, 2010 7:32 pm in International Law, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
John Bellinger, former legal adviser to the State Department, reflects on the meaning of the Geneva Conventions today, in a post at Foreign Policy. Today, 12 August, is the 61st anniversary of the signing of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the international treaties designed to protect soldiers and civilians during armed conflicts. The treaties became […]