Religion has always been at the cutting edge of transnational association, and that's proving as true today with this story: breakaway elements of the US episcopal church are putting themselves under the jurisdiction (if that's the appropriate vocabulary) of more conservative Anglican churches in Africa. Earlier this week it was several Northern Virginia parishes which aligned themselves with the...
Speaking of revised government tests, the foreign service exam and the general criteria for selection are getting an overhaul as a result of a look from McKinsey. The new process will allow for consideration of factors beyond test scores (to take references and international experience into consideration, for instance). The exam itself doesn't sound like it'll get changed...
Academic papers rarely get front-page coverage in the major media, but that's the treatment this study got earlier this week in the Financial Times. (I bet the authors are sorry, though, that the FT didn't link to the SSRN version.) Perhaps the most interesting claim (from a quick look) is that judges may be more biased than juries...
An incident of anti-immigrant sentiment, there have been some prominent calls over the last two years or so to scale back the near absolute rule of territorial birthright citizenship under which anyone born in the United States (save the children of diplomats) is extended citizenship at birth. In the last Congress several bills were introduced that would have limited...
We're delighted to have Derek Jinks, who teaches international and criminal law subjects at the University of Texas Law School, on board as a guest blogger for the next couple of weeks. Derek's book on the laws of war is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. His papers can be found here, including his most recent piece (co-authored with...
Blood Diamond, which opens nationwide today, sounds like a dreadful movie, as movies whose central message is unsubtle social commentary so often are. But for obvious reasons it's provoking a lot of interest in the role that the diamond trade has played in African civil conflict. You can find a good update of the conflict diamonds situation here,...
About half of the names on a list of 30 nominees passed along to the Harvard Board of Overseers have now been leaked (see here and here). Among them: Anne-Marie Slaughter (who will be known to most of our readers) and Jessica Tuchman Mathews (who has headed up the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace since 1997 and is very...
Otherwise, not too much change here. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (the inheritor of the "benefits" side of the INS - who ever thought we'd miss it) has unveiled a new version of the so-called civics test administered to naturalization applicants, many years in the offing which will be used on a pilot basis in select markets over the...
See this op-ed in the L.A. Times. Interesting that even Catholic countries are getting on this bandwagon. Immigration law is likely to be a flashpoint on the question, as the U.S. persists in refusing to recognize same-sex relationships for purposes of preferential admission. ...
There has been some chatter recently in the blogosphere (at TNR’s Open University, and here, here, and here) and elsewhere about reviving the draft or some other sort of mandatory national service. Almost of all this is coming from center-left Democrats. Charlie Rangel has been talking this up for some time, and has reintroduced a bill which would...
Thanks from all of us here at OJ to Janet Levit for some great guest-blogging over the past two weeks, with some especially good posts on understudied private-law topics. We'll hope to have Janet back again for another visit soon. ...
The USG has settled a claim brought against it by Brandon Mayfield relating to his wrongful detention as a suspected terrorist. It's paying out $2 million, but more interestingly the settlement also involved a formal apology, as described in today's NYT:“The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and his family for the suffering caused” by his...
