Michael Skapinker has a great column in today’s Financial Times, “Give diligencing its due in the lexicon of 2010,” on words newly included in the New Oxford American Dictionary. (Behind the subscriber wall, alas.) He quotes Steven Pinker estimating that “a fifth of English verbs started as nouns, including ‘to progress’, to contact’, and to […]
Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson
B+
I am delighted to say that President Obama has supplied me with what to say to students coming to complain about receiving a B+ in my classes – a semi-regular occurrence, in these days of grade inflation. (I have a sneaky feeling that my student evaluations are going to take a nosedive this term, having […]
Should CIA Drone Operators Worry?
By Kenneth Anderson on December 15, 2009 8:59 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
If this short report in Newsweek is true, then I think I would worry about legal liability more than before, if I were a CIA officer involved in Predator drone strikes. I would have a much greater level of concern that the administration would not back me up in case of an indictment in a […]
Opinio Juris Copenhagen Postings
Over at Opinio Juris this week, a special lineup of international law experts blogging on Copenhagen – addressing topics ranging from proposals to pay for things to the questions of how whatever emerges is supposed to be enforced. It’s a highly expert group of guest bloggers, often in quite technical terms of either law or […]
Just War Ethics in the Obama Nobel Prize Speech
As has been widely discussed, and Roger Alford at Opinio Juris notes, President Obama’s Nobel Prize speech drew extensively upon just war ethics. I will try to come back to this very interesting topic of just war ethics later on, but not before the … corporate finance and IBT exams are graded! Meanwhile, the distinguished […]
Paul Samuelson, Ave Atque Vale
Paul Samuelson has died, at the age of 94. From the New York Times obituary: In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Mr. Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from one that ruminates about economic issues to one that solves problems, answering questions about cause and effect with mathematical rigor and clarity. When economists “sit […]
“Guilty” Battlefield Robots
By Kenneth Anderson on December 13, 2009 1:25 pm in International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict
One of my favorite issues of the New York Times Magazine is its “year in ideas” issue, which comes annually in December. It has a short item this year related to battlefield robotics and law and ethics, by Dara Kerr, “Guilty Robots.” (If you go over the Opinio Juris version of this post, you can pick […]
CFR Report on Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention
By Kenneth Anderson on December 11, 2009 1:09 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, War and Armed Conflict
President Obama’s Nobel Prize speech yesterday made reference to the moral authority, under the ethics of the just war, for armed humanitarian intervention in some situations. It is a topic that has been debated and discussed as a matter of international law for, well, a long time, but which gained particular urgency following on Bosnia, […]
Survival of the Fattest and the Global Superfluous Poor in the Negotiations in Copenhagen
By Kenneth Anderson on December 10, 2009 10:08 am in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, Economy
One of the minor brouhahas at Copenhagen has been over one of the many pieces of public art put up for the conference, Survival of the Fattest, sculpted by artist Jens Galschiot (2004), sponsored by sevenmeters.net. (I am putting up an image from a blog I frequently read, the “I am a middle-aged gay libertarian […]
Quick Note on Sunstein and the Precautionary Principle
This is further to Jim’s post below on the Precautionary Principle and climate change; it also goes obliquely to a couple of Eric’s posts on the climate change debates. I’ve been meaning to raise Cass Sunstein and his very interesting book Worst-Case Scenarios in this context, but I’ll be very brief. Jim points out that […]
How Not to Do E-Commerce
My wife left the house for work this morning in a justified fury. She had spent close to an hour on the phone with UPS – its mechanical voices and then varieties of humans, trying to track down an $800 TV purchased from Costco.com online and scheduled for delivery yesterday from UPS. As with all […]
Threat of Greek Sovereign Bankruptcy and Possible Consequences for the Eurozone
Der Spiegel has an informative story on the possibility that a Eurozone country might default on its sovereign debt, with economic, political, and legal consequences that could be anything from serious to dire. The country is Greece: Greece has already accumulated a mountain of debt that will be difficult if not impossible to pay off. […]
Targeted Killing, Safe Havens, and the President’s West Point Speech
By Kenneth Anderson on December 8, 2009 11:15 am in Afghanistan, Bush, Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Law, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Several times in his West Point speech on Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Obama declared that the US would not permit Al Qaeda or “violent extremists” the use of safe havens. He specifically noted Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The President unsurprisingly never overtly mentioned Predator or drone missile strikes, or the CIA as the operational agents […]
Stepping Down as the Board Chair of the Media Development Loan Fund
I’ve been lite-blogging the past few days, as I’ve been attending the board meeting of the Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF), where I stepped down as board chair after fifteen years on the board, and the last twelve as board chair. MDLF is a nonprofit private investment fund that provides low cost financing and business […]
LSAC Study on Law School Gaming Resources for US News Rankings
My law school’s Librarian and Associate Dean, Billie Jo Kaufman, sent around this latest newsletter from the Law School Admissions Council re a new study on how law schools move resources around in order to maximize USNWR rankings (thanks Billie Jo!). Here is part of the LSAC executive summary: Fear of Failing: the Effects of […]