The CIA has declassified the “Family Jewels.” (Press release here.) Also known as the “Book of Skeletons,” this document was compiled in 1973 under Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger, in the aftermath of the revelations from the Watergate investigation and other reports of CIA bad acts. Wanting to get a handle of the situation, of the skeletons in...
Sebastian Mallaby has an excellent essay in Monday’s Washington Post on a silent revolution in globalization. He writes:The next globalization battle lurks over the horizon, but you can already guess its contours. It will be shaped by two revolutions in finance and business: the growth of vast government-controlled investment funds abroad and the muddled progress toward shareholder democracy in...
Last year, Julian had written a post about a dispute between China and Japan over whether certain rocks in the ocean should be considered islands. If they are islands, then Japan would have a significantly larger Exclusive Economic Zone than had been previously recognized. To bolster the view that these are islands, not mere rocks, Japan has...
My daily commute takes me from one edge of New York City to another edge. While sitting in traffic, it’s hard not to think about urban sprawl, congestion pricing, and so on. But, as recent news reports and scholarship have re-emphasized, the evolution of cities should be thought of not only as a purely local matter, but rather...
I just stumbled across this article that was posted on an ecommerce website eight months ago about strategies for countering bad news from your foreign business operations (like accusations of complicity with torture and murder, etc.). The piece begins like this:That a labor union at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Columbia was accusing the company of hiring paramilitary groups...
The recent G-8 summit has highlighted some of the policy differences among the US, Russia, and the states of the EU. Robert Kagan has written about certain disparities in US and European views in a much-quoted essay and subsequent book that spawned the bon mot that “Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus.” But beyond missile shields...
Over at Balkinization, Marty Lederman has posted a thorough critique of John Bellinger's recent speech. Lederman takes a nuanced view of what it is the Administration has said, versus what was forced upon the Administration by the Supreme Court and finds that Bellinger's speech sometimes reads more like an alternate -reality of what might have been had the State Department...
In case anyone is interested, I have posted to SSRN an essay that is part of a written symposium in honor of Father Robert Drinan and his book Can God and Caesar Coexist? The symposium also includes essays by professors Elizabeth Defeis and Mark Janis, as well as a responsive essay by Father Drinan, one of his last published pieces....
Well, not much, but even though we don’t often utter the word “law” in the same sentence as “World Bank President,” doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t. Especially during a transition in leadership. The World Bank affects the rule of law through its governance initiatives at the domestic level and the web of borrower agreements at the international level. Clinton-era Bank President...
OK, here’s one to ponder: a Chinese company, Anshe Chung Studios, has just issued a press release concerning its construction of a financial system that world support investment across the boundaries of virtual worlds on the Internet, such as Second Life and Entropia. Here’s how they put it:Anshe Chung Studios is preparing to launch a virtual financial market, financial...
A story that has been getting a bit of play in Europe but not as much on this side of the Atlantic is the dispute over the placement of a war memorial in Estonia. In April the Estonian government removed from its capital a memorial to Soviet soldiers who fought in WW II. Estonia’s ethnic Russian minority—and Russia—were...
For the next couple of weeks, we are happy to have Marko Milanovic join us as a guest blogger. Marko is currently serving as law clerk to Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the International Court of Justice. He obtained his first degree in law from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and his LL.M from the University of Michigan. Prior to his...
