'Whatever are you dreaming of, sir?' Mathilde asked him. There was a note of intimacy in her question, and she had come back running and was quite out of breath in her eagerness to be with him. Julien was tired of self-suppression. In a moment of pride, he told her frankly what he was thinking. (The Red and the Black, vol....
John Bolton and John Yoo have this op-ed in today's NY Times vaunting Article II treaties over congressional-executive agreements. While conceding the fact of CEAs in the international economic context, the duo argues that going the CEA route for such agreements as the ICC and a successor to the Kyoto protocol "would pose a serious challenge to American principles...
... economics and Hume are the fashion. (The Red and the Black, volume 2, chapter 53, "The Clergy, Their Forests, Liberty.") Special edition for ... Eric Posner, Adrian Vermeule, Andrew Guzman, Jack Goldsmith, and Kal Raustiala! (Utilitarianism has a long cultural, indeed literary, history.)...
Alan Dershowitz published an editorial yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that argues Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza are "perfectly proportionate." I have no desire to argue the substance of that point, in part because views on Israel and Palestine are largely impervious to facts or argument (on both sides), but largely because the concept of proportionality is so...
What happens to litigation that obviously should be pursued in a foreign country but is prevented from doing so by a forum non conveniens blocking statute? That's the question presented in a recent Florida state court case of Scotts Co. v. Hacienda Loma Linda. Here are the basic facts: Scotts sells a product to Hacienda that allegedly...
Germany has sued Italy before the ICJ challenging successful Italian lawsuits that have denied Germany's sovereign immunity arising out of World War II forced labor claims. The ICJ press release is here. Here is Germany's key argument: “In recent years, Italian judicial bodies have repeatedly disregarded the jurisdictional immunity of Germany as a sovereign State. The critical...
The Baron could not produce epigrams; he required at least four sentences of six lines each to be brilliant. (The Red and the Black, part II, chapter 34, "The Hotel de La Mole." Sometimes, alas, I fear this is me.)...
Since 1955 NORAD (and its predecessor CONAD) has tracked Santa’s each Christmas Eve and has answered questions for boys and girls about his progress. NORAD’s Santa tracking service uses interactive maps updated every few minutes at http://www.noradsanta.org. As Santa stops in each location, you can click an icon to learn more about that part of the world. There are also...
We interrupt the regularly scheduled Sundays with Stendhal to raise an issue of crucial importance, at least for OJ readers in the northern hemisphere above a certain latitude ...
The great Irish intellectual, scholar, and diplomat Conor Cruise O'Brien has died. Although for many OJ readers, he is remembered most as a diplomat - at the center of the United Nations and the Congo Crisis of 1961 - his greatest influence on me was through his massive study of Edmund Burke, The Great Melody. One passage that O'Brien cited...
No, I don't mean Obama's foreign policy. The Foreign Relations of the United States is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity; and these days it's in trouble. The tip of the iceberg is the fracas described here and here between the Historian of the Department of State Marc Susser and the Advisory Committee on...
I received in the mail a couple of days ago an author copy of the journal International History Review. I have a short piece in the December 2008 issue, a brief review of Stephen Hopgood, Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International. To be honest, I had not heard of the IHR before I accepted the assignment, but I was...
