Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

One of the ways to heighten student and faculty interest in international, comparative and cross-cultural legal issues is to examine those issues through the lens of traditional domestic topics. Nothing seems more “local” than criminal defense. The newly published Second Edition of “Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense,” edited by Linda Friedman Ramirez, an attorney in Florida, should put that assumption of locality to rest. The book is an off-the-shelf guide for practitioners, which the publisher describes as follows: Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense is an indispensable book for the criminal...

I will join the chorus of praise for this terrific book. But I want to add briefly to Peter’s critique of Ben’s premise that the current threat from transnational terrorism has us in a “long war,” by looking at what this means for broader foreign policy – one that encompasses, but it is not driven by, domestic legal policy. The book correctly, and refreshingly, recognizes two important points: (1) that addressing the threat of terrorism requires approaches that encompass domestic law enforcement and regulation as well as applications of armed...

The book was in English. The publisher was Dutch. The reviewer was a distinguished German professor. The review was published on a New York website. Beyond doubt, once a text or image go online, they become available worldwide, including France. But should that alone give jurisdiction to French courts in circumstances such as this? Does the fact that the author of the book, it turned out, retained her French nationality before going to live and work in Israel make a difference? Libel tourism – libel terrorism to some — is...

...beyond the state. Marc Plattner has a fine new book out, Democracy Without Borders: Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy. As Plattner states on the page 3, “Very crudely stated, the contention of this book is that we cannot hope to enjoy liberalism (at least in today’s world) unless it is accompanied by democracy, and we cannot enjoy liberal democracy outside the framework of the nation-state.” Later in the book on Page 107, Plattner quotes political scientists Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan as follows: “Without a state, they argue, “no modern...

...or beyond, etc. – at this moment there are two key sources. One is Woodward’s new book. I took a pause out of writing some stuff on these topics to read the book; events unfolding now appear quite directly to follow on the path laid out in the President’s review of Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy a year ago. This is the main narrative of the book, and well worth reading closely. There’s little going on now that is not presaged in those discussions. And current events are both following a...

...to publish the two extraordinary books Saif wrote on civil society and democratic reform in the developing world, will presumably now cancel publication. Barber is probably correct in predicting that Oxford will back down from publication. But is that necessarily the right decision? The junior Gaddafi’s study sounds pretty useful to anyone interested in nonstate actors. It’s not every academic study that has The Monitor Group on board crunching the data! Although Oxford could no longer count on a large bulk sale, it would surely sell better than average for...

...that my area was ‘heavily published in’ (OUP) or that my work was ‘not within [the publisher’s] commissioning interests’ (CUP).  I have witnessed other female colleagues face similar challenges with OUP and/or CUP. Meanwhile, white male colleagues continue to publish their work in the same or similar areas with both publishers. Examples include Patrick Labuda’s book ‘In the Court’s Shadow: International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability’, Barrie Sanders’ new book ‘Doing Justice to History: Confronting the Past in International Criminal Courts’, and my personal friend Antonio Coco’s forthcoming book ‘The...

making the capacity of the group to adhere to GCIII obligations a consideration that cannot so easily be batted away? I would be interested to hear Mačák’s thinking here. Conclusion The best books are those which start conversations and debates, and I welcome the opportunity to be able to solicit Mačák’s thoughts on these issues – which are only two small points in a rich sea of analysis. From one Pictet-ist to another, I would like to congratulate him as his book is certainly a great addition to the literature....

approach of Limits. First, the book largely ignores the effect of international human rights legal institutions (e.g., ad hoc and permanent courts) on a range of state and individual behavior. Second, by focusing almost exclusively on interstate behavior and international political institutions, Goldsmith and Posner fail to examine the domestic dimension of human rights compliance. Third, by minimizing the role of individuals, NGOs, corporations, and other non-state actors, the book paints a distorted picture of the current processes through which human rights norms are elaborated and enforced. Fourth, the book...

...don’t seem to have felt much obligation other than simply to repeat opinions from past years, rather than actually engage with the memoir on its own terms (call me cynical, but as a long-time book reviewer, let’s say I’m not persuaded that all the reviewers have read more than a few of the most controversial chapters of the book — lightly). Hanson, by contrast, is defending Cheney, and reads the memoir more sympathetically but also far more closely. In the end, agree or disagree either with Hanson or with Cheney,...

...it had become imperative to prevent aggressive war (use of force) through the rule of law.While not all that is contained in the chapter is new (some of the same territory is covered, for example, in Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro’s book, The Internationalists ), the background is central to understanding the use of force regime in the Charter and the book would be incomplete without it.   The chapter additionally examines some open questions—what one might call “grey areas”—in the Charter regime and customary international law, particularly related to the...

My general view is that critical book reviews are much more interesting than positive ones (unless it is of my own book, that is). And so I read with great interest George Mason Law Professor Jeremy Rabkin’s takedown of Kathryn Sikkink’s new book “The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics.” The Sikkink book argues, through an empirical study, that human rights prosecutions are having an important effect on changing international politics. Rabkin’s criticism of the Sikkink “Justice Cascade” thesis, especially her choice of data and her...