Weekend Links

Eric Posner (here and here) and Henry Farrell continue to argue over international law.

Linda McLean on the death of Michelle Triola Marvin as an opportunity to consider Marvin v. Marvin (1976) and nonmarital unions (Marvin’s NY Times Obituary is here)

Jonathan Turley, The 2009 List Of Spooky Torts And Scary Crimes

Martin Scorsese at The Daily Beast with the 11 scariest horror movies of all time.

Eric Johnson: Respect Copyright Law: Don't Print Your Own Canadian Money

Orly Lobel: Notes from the Aspiring Law Professor Conference at ASU

CNN: Stressful jobs that pay badly (via Rolfe Winkler)

And Least Stressful Jobs (with College Professor at number 3)

ING to be broken up in wake of bail-out (FT)

NY Times -- At Public Universities: Less for More

The article discusses U.C.L.A.,  the University of Arizona, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Florida as public schools struggling with state budget cuts, and the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia,  University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, among others, as "private publics" (or soon to be making that leap)

Luke Ryan, street musician, on his new Axe deodorant corporate sponsorship (NY Times):

Mr. Ryan had once sworn never to sell out, after he watched a documentary where Neil Young said the same thing. “I said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of integrity. That’s me, too.’ Then I realized two things. First is, Neil Young’s a millionaire. And second, nobody’s ever asked me. So as soon as they asked me, I said, ‘Well, why not?’ ”

 

Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

If one wants to learn about Eric Posner's views about international law, one should, in addition to his latest book, read his earlier work co-authored with Jack Goldsmith, The Limits of International Law (2005). After that, read a work that is far more historically sensitive and empirically accurate, conceptually coherent and lucid, and methodologically sound and availing, than either Posner volume, namely, Mary Ellen O'Connell's The Power and Purpose of International Law (2008). O'Connell rightly references a remarkable review essay of the Goldsmith/Posner book by Robert Hockett that is heads above the many other reviews of their book (reviews that, while critical, were strangely deferential and timid, owing in part, perhaps, to the reviewers' apparent lack of familiarity with rational choice theory). Hockett's devastatingly on-target analysis, "The Limits of Their World," 90 Minnesota Law Review (2006): 1720-1790, is available here: http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/hein/Hocket,%20Robert%2090%20Minn.%20L.%20Rev.%201720%202006.pdf

A bracing antidote to a Posnerian or Posnerian-like approach to questions of international law that does not hide normative assumptions and claims behind pseudo-social scientific and descriptive pretense, is Allen Buchanan's Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (2004). Buchanan, along with David Golove, earlier dealt with time-worn Realists, Moral Minimalists of little backbone and, yes, Legal Nihilists (and by implication, Simple-Minded Positivists), in their essential essay, "Philosophy of International Law," in Jules Coleman and Scott Shapiro, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (2002): 868-934.

Posner should rather be debating the likes of Buchanan, O'Connell or Hockett.

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

As an addendum to the above comment: Law students relatively new to international law and wanting to explore this subject in more depth, should find my bibliographies useful: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2008/04/international-law-human-rights.html

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

One last comment: I'm not, in principle, against the use of rational choice theory, especially insofar as it takes account of critiques by the likes Shapiro or Sen. And in international law a step in the right direction is represented by Andrew T. Guzman's How International Law Works: A Rational Choice Theory (2008): http://www.amazon.com/How-International-Law-Works-Rational/dp/0195305566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257101383&sr=1-1

[Kim Krawiec]

Thanks, Patrick. This is all very informative, as always. Kim