A very Merry Christmas to our celebrating readers, and to everyone, a happy holiday and best wishes in the New Year. I would like to report for the record that NORAD got it right, and ...
"Russell, I heard on your tape that you plan to study engineering - with a view to space." "Yes, sir. I mean, 'Yes, Mr. Secretary'." "Have you considered studying law? Many young engineers to want to space - not many lawyers. But the Law goes everywhere. A man skilled in space law and meta-law would be in a strong position." "Why not both?" suggested Peewee's Daddy. "I deplore this modern overspecialization." "That's an idea," agreed Mr. van Duivendijk. "He could then write his own terms."A couple of notes on this classic juvenile sci-fi book by Robert Heinlein from the 1950s, Have Spacesuit Will Travel. Already proposing joint degrees! What's "meta-law" supposed to be, anyway? What about women skilled in space law and meta-law by 2050? Do we like "to space" as a verb? Does "the Law go everywhere"?
I do realize that Copenhagen is still underway, so this is a little like whispering in church (I'll put it mostly under the fold) ...
One of my favorite issues of the New York Times Magazine is its "year in ideas" issue, which comes annually in December. Because OJ is a repository of things related to battlefield robotics and law and ethics, I wanted to flag for your attention the item by Dara Kerr, "Guilty Robots." [I]magine robots that obey injunctions like Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative...
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, Rwanda, and Kosovo in the...
Der Spiegel has an excellent 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. The government has borrowed more than...
Several times in the last couple of years I've had the privilege of appearing on panels with Georgetown law professor Vicki Jackson, talking about constitutional comparativism. She is always a pleasure to listen to and engage with on this topic. It's been a hot topic in the last few years, and several OJ'ers have weighed in, including Roger and me....
Let me leave aside for the moment all the leaked memos and stuff. I have a question about Copenhagen that predates all of that. I'm not being snarky - taking on assumption all the climate problems as they have been stated, I do not understand how this exercise manages to overcome the collective action failure problems that have been encountered...
Where is the Obama administration on the Ottawa Landmines Ban Convention? After some clarifications, it appears that the US is conducting a "broad" review of antipersonnel landmine policy and the Ottawa Convention, while maintaining the previous Bush administration stance on an "interim" basis. This Reuter's story, in the Washington Post, gives some of the ins and outs. Meanwhile, the Cartagena...
Mark Perry has an interesting post, with a super-interesting graph, at his blog Carpe Diem, of long-run changes in regional share of global GDP, using historical data sets from Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture. [caption id="attachment_10690" align="alignnone" width="300" caption=""][/caption] As Perry explains: What might be surprising is that the U.S. share of world GDP has been relatively constant for...
Ruth Wedgwood's new column at Forbes.com takes up the uncomfortable question of Peter Galbraith and his financial dealings with regard to Kurdish autonomy, oilfields, and Galbraith's consulting deal with a Norwegian company that could conceivably pay him somewhere up to $100 million. That discussion is very important and fraught with issues - Galbraith has not been a US diplomat for...
For those around DC this upcoming Monday afternoon, there is a very interesting panel discussion organized jointly by the ABA International Section, ASIL, and SAIS on the ICC. It will feature a screening of an excerpt from the documentary The Reckoning, and then a panel discussion that will have Gary Solis, Jane Stromseth, John Bellinger, and me, and moderated by...
