Academic

On Israel's 60th Anniversary of Statehood: Views From the Empire and the Caliphate

Posted on May 16, 2008
Sometimes, when reviewing the mountain of talk about the situation in that portion of the euphemistically described "Middle East" (understood to encompass that portion of what had been the dar al-Islam whose control has reverted to the people of Israel), one gets the sense of a certain deja vu...

ETA and the Management of Revolution in a Bureaucratic World

Posted on May 14, 2008
Modern revolutionary movements--whether separatist movements like those in Sri Lanka, Kosovo or Tibet, irredentist movements like those in Ireland, political movements like those in the Philippines, or ethnic/religious/colonialist movements like those in Iraq--have shifted in tactics to suit the conflict management model of international relations in vogue today...

Neo Colonialism in Civil Society Clothing or the Rise of Human Dignity as the First Supra National Principle of Internaitonal Law?

Posted on May 13, 2008
As the Burmese government continues to keep its borders tightly closed, the international community has increased the tempo and volume of its call for an intervention in Burma. U.N. Calls for Burma Aid Corridor, BBC News Online, May 13, 2008. I have already suggested the way in which these calls for intervention without consent on the basis of a relatively new and potentially powerful international principle of "responsibility to protect" will begin to further shift the distribution of power between states and the "collective of states" currently operating within the United Nations framework...

Manging the Warfare of the Oppressed--Containing the Exuberence of Darfur Warriors

Posted on May 11, 2008
I have written of the current turn in a certain turn of international relations and law--one grounded in a managerial approach to difference and conflict. See Larry Catá Backer, The Devil?s Advocate: The West, the Invincible Guerrilla, the Value of Violence and the Rise of a Management Model of War, Law at the End of the Day, August 7, 2006...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Disaster in Burma: Bad Government Response, Worse Resort to International Law

Posted on May 07, 2008
The Burmese disaster has grown from small to staggering. The recent cyclone has caused a tremendous amount of damage. Like all such natural disasters, the Burmese cyclone serves as a harbingers of additional, man made, disasters. I will mention two...

An Apartheid for All Seasons: Bolivia and its Autonomy Movements

Posted on May 03, 2008
Almost 2,500 years ago Thucydides reminded us, in describing a bitter intra-ethnic way among the Greeks, that even the most powerful and evocative political terms, could be so stretched and distorted as to lose all meaning."Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at last, from having heard what had been done before, carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals...

The Panopticon in Space: Holland and the Domestic Spy Eye in the Sky

Posted on April 29, 2008
It was only a matter of time before technology brought the oppressive hunger for control of many states--especially democratic states--a new toy. As I have suggested in a longer work, Larry Catá Backer, Global Panopticism: States, Corporations and the Governance Effects of Monitoring Regimes, 15 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies -- (forthcoming 2007), states are moving toward systems of regulation not through law but with surveillance...

Soft Islam in Egypt: Does the Testimony of Two Women Equal that of a Man and Other Questions

Posted on April 27, 2008
Al Ahram ran an interesting story recently on movement within Shari'a in Egypt. Reem Leila, In Her Favour, Al Ahram Weekly, May 1-7, 2008. The report provides a window not only on the way that even Shari'a modulates in the face of changes in popular thought, but also reveals the constraints of the language employed in the service of change...

The Irony of Press Freedom in Malaysia: Anwar Ibrahim Buys a Newspaper

Posted on April 20, 2008
In many places, press freedom is assured by strictly separating press ownership from the political elites. An independent press is said to provide that objectivity that ensures the presentation of a variety of views. When the press is controlled by the state--or by the principal political actors within a system of government--the information provided is said to be less useful to readers...

Ecce Homo: Reflections of Benedict XVI's Careful Comments to the United Nations

Posted on April 19, 2008
In hope we were saved (spe salvi facti sumus) (Rom 8:24)). So Benedict XVI chose to begin an encyclical delivered on November 30, 2007. Benedict XVI, Encyclical, Spe Salvi, Nov. 30, 2007. I was reminded of a critical portion of that encyclical on the occasion of Benedict XVI's address to th United Nations...

¡Qué difícil es ser breve en la batalla de ideas!

Posted on April 17, 2008
Castro is worried. The pace of Sinification might be accelerating. People are talking--that is, people that count are talking. That is people who are read by the Cuban elite are talking. And what they appear to be talking about are those fundamental changes to the character of the Cuban revolution that, while it may not satisfy the right wing of the Miami Cuban community, will drive the Stalinist wing of the Cuban establishment mad...

Has Fidel Castro Taken a Turn for the Worse?

Posted on April 10, 2008
Fidel Castro's last column, appearing online in what is the closest thing to a blog since his illness, Reflections of the Commander in Chief, last appeared on February 22, 2008. See Fidel Castro Ruz, Reflections By Comrade Fidel Who Wants To Be In The Garbage Dump?, Feb...

"Fitna" and the Muslim Mind in Egypt, A Remembrance of Things Past

Posted on April 06, 2008
As one might expect nowadays, the reaction within the dar al Islam to the distribution of that questionable little film, "Fitna" was hysterical. In the West there was fear. The official site of the film http://fitnathemovie.com was blocked by Network solutions, the site host, who posted this notice: "This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy...

Extraterritoriality and Corporate Social Responsibility: Governing Corporations, Governing Developing States.

Posted on March 27, 2008
Describing the current direction of norm making for multinational corporations, John Ruggie recently noted, ?[t]he state-based system of global governance has struggled for more than a generation to adjust to the expanding reach and growing influence of transnational corporations...

Sex and Politics--America's "Jerry Springer" Moment

Posted on March 25, 2008
"This is my Jerry Springer moment. I don't want this moment to die." (This is My Jerry Springer Moment, Jerry Springer, The Opera, Act. 1, No. 14 ). So goes politics in the United States. The American public reveled in its political bathos recently with the sexual voyeurism among the political classes in New York...

Redefining Market Failures: Bear Stearns and the Class Element in Market Discipline

Posted on March 15, 2008
We have been told that " The Federal Reserve took the extraordinary step yesterday of providing emergency funding to one of Wall Street's venerable firms, Bear Stearns, after it ran out of cash to repay its lenders." Neil Irwin and Tomoeh Murakami Tse, Fred Comes to the Rescue as Wall Street Giant Slips, The Washington Post...

Kosovo: A Threat to China and Russia; a Great Benefit to Israel

Posted on March 14, 2008
The impending independence of Kosovo has produced both elation and consternation. This event provides a window on the difficulties and opportunities of that set of great movements that had their origins in the anti-colonial and anti-imperial movements of Central Europe and Latin America in the 19th century...

The End of Golden Shares in the EU: The EU Commission Takes a Step in its Abolition, It Ought to Harmonize the Rules of Sovereign Investments

Posted on March 09, 2008
The European Commission has at last made explicit, what the European Court of Justice has been suggesting implicitly since it began to consider the issue in 2002?the Member States of the E.U. no longer have the capacity to invest in or restrict the investment in it own domestic corporations...

Abdullah Badawi, Anwar Ibrahim and the Politics of Race , Ethnicity and Affirmatice Action in Malaysia

Posted on March 09, 2008
People, especially people in the developing world, like to point to the state of race and ethnic relations in the United States as symbolic of the evils of a subordinating race or ethnic privileging culture. Those systems of subordination, of social constructions of race and ethnic hierarchy, people believe, are at the root of flawed legal systems, and through them, of flawed approached to international law and governance...

Cuba and Brazil Part IV: Bringing Lula Into the Cuban Orbit; Bringing Cuba Into the Brazilian Orbit?

Posted on March 07, 2008
We have been considering the multi part efforts by Castro to woo the Brazilian President Lula. That effort ends now with this fourth part. The first of the essays provided the set up for the discussion, establishing to deep-rooted commonalities binding Brazil and Cuba, Castro and Lula...

Venezuela-Columbia-Ecuador: A Melodrama for International Law

Posted on March 04, 2008
My favorite part of the book Animal Farm is the last section, when the pigs all join in a pleasant meal in the farmhouse they now call their own. To those watching from outside, there appears to be little difference between the pigs and the humans they succeeded...

On Seeking Closer Relations With Brazil--Must Cuba Choose Between China and Brazil?

Posted on March 02, 2008
One of my students at Tulane, Jacob Welch, had some insightful comments about my suggestion that Cuba was seeking to establish stronger relationships with Brazil. He was unconvinced that there was much benefit to Cuba cozying up to Brazil, especially if that occurred to the detriment of Cuba?s relationship with China...

On the Micro Economics of Efficiency: Suicide in India and the Politics Amelioration

Posted on February 29, 2008
One of the great things about democracy is its responsiveness to crisis. Unfortunately, the motivating crisis tends to center on the re-election of a government. Likewise, the greatest benefit of free (more or less) markets, are the long term aggregate wealth maximization that serves as its (aggregate) social reward...

Cuba and Brazil Part III: Cuba and Brazil in Parallel Strokes

Posted on February 24, 2008
We have been considering the multi part efforts by Castro to woo the Brazilian President Lula. That effort now stretches to four parts. The first of the essays provided the set up for the discussion, establishing to deep-rooted commonalities binding Brazil and Cuba, Castro and Lula...

Georgia State University Hosts International Conference on the Future of Legal Education

Posted on February 22, 2008
The Georgia State University College of Law has just hosted an excellent conference: an International Conference on the Future of Legal Education, February 20 - 23, 2008.This conference, a major event in the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the GSU College of Law, will take as its point of departure a highly critical report on American legal education recently issued by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: Educating Lawyers...

Fidel Castro Steps Down: On the Importance of Gesture and Opportunities for Friends and Foes

Posted on February 19, 2008
Fidel Castro announced that he would no longer seek to serve his country in an official capacity, as President of the Cuban Republic. In delivered remarks he declared his retirement. The physical demands of the job were too much for him, given the present state of his health...

The Private Law of Public Law: Public Authorities as Shareholders, Golden Shares, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and the Public Law Element in Private Choic

Posted on February 13, 2008
I recently participated in an excellent conference hosted by Ralf Michaels. The conference was entitled The New European Choice-of-Law Revolution: Lessons for the United States? and was held at the Duke University Law School on February 9, 2008. Download Conference PosterI served on the panel on Corporate Law, and presented the following talk, which will serve as the introduction to the longer paper that will follow...

Alternativa Bolivariana Para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA): A Summary of the 6th Summit of Member States

Posted on February 11, 2008
My research assistant at Penn State, Augusto I. Molina Ramon (Penn State Law 2009), has helped prepare the following summary of the events at the just concluded 6th summit of ALBA that concluded January 27, 2008. The summary provided in the Boletin ALBA No...

Cuba and Brazil Part II: Castro Continues His Wooing of Lula

Posted on February 10, 2008
In his January essay series, Fidel Castro focused on Cuba?s connections with Brazil and Castro?s personal connection with that prodigal son of Marxist-Leninist determinism?Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the current President to Brazil. Written in three parts, the first part served as a set up of sorts...

A Critical Reading of the Carnegie Foundation's Study of Legal Education: "Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law"

Posted on February 06, 2008
Over a century ago influential members of the public began to worry about the social order. In the face of large numbers of immigrants with no cultural connection to English social and political values (Morton 1984; Condliffe Langemann 1992), and significant class distinctions arising as a consequence of the great revolution in American business and industry (Mink 1986), all sorts of groups arose to help ?fix? the problems that might have been viewed as threatening the Republic...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.