Alan Dershowitz, a pro-torture plagiarist who has inexplicably managed to find employment at Harvard Law School, has written an embarrassingly incompetent Op-Ed at the Huffington Post. In it, he accuses the Department of Political Science at Brooklyn College of having an ‘Israel problem’ because it has sponsored, and thereby, according to Dershowitz, endorsed the contentsContinue reading “Alan Dershowitz, Pro-Torture Plagiarist, Deigns to Lecture Us On Intellectual Honesty”
Category Archives: Law and Legal Theory
Carmen Ortiz Did Not Act Alone in Hounding Aaron Swartz To His Death
No prosecution of war criminals, torturers and mass murderers; no prosecution of those that declare a war on false pretense; no prosecution of those that indulge in grand larceny and financial fraud, immiserating the lives of many; no prosecuting of the rich and the powerful; but over-zealous hounding of a young, idealistic, brilliant man whose onlyContinue reading “Carmen Ortiz Did Not Act Alone in Hounding Aaron Swartz To His Death”
Thomas Jefferson: Creepy, or Redeemed by the Declaration of Independence?
The Thomas Jefferson nightmare is on us again. Was the Mother of All Founding Fathers a dastardly racist, and perhaps worse, a hypocrite to boot? Paul Finkelman has an Op-Ed in The New York Times that makes that case: at the time he penned the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson owned 175 slaves; over the nextContinue reading “Thomas Jefferson: Creepy, or Redeemed by the Declaration of Independence?”
Regulation, Social Norming and Tocqueville’s ‘Majority’
There is a well-known model of behavior modification, a taxonomy of sorts of regulatory mechanisms, due to Lawrence Lessig, which lists four modalities of regulation: the law, the market, social norms and architecture. The law provides punitive sanctions, actively restrains by making visible its power, and points in the desired direction; the market provides economicContinue reading “Regulation, Social Norming and Tocqueville’s ‘Majority’”
Flying Solo, As Author, For a Change
Sometime this week or the next, my fourth book, Brave New Pitch: The Evolution of Modern Cricket (HarperCollins India 2012), will make its way to bookstores and online book-sellers. My fourth book differs in one crucial regard from those that have preceded it: I have not co-authored it with anyone; its jacket lists but oneContinue reading “Flying Solo, As Author, For a Change”
Displacements of, Not Solutions to, Philosophical Problems: A Quick Primer
A close, critical reader is worth his weight in gold. I am reminded of this whenever I share a bit of writing with someone who proceeds to clear up confusions deftly and rapidly, and sometimes, represents my position better than I had managed. In part of a rough piece of writing tucked away somewhere, IContinue reading “Displacements of, Not Solutions to, Philosophical Problems: A Quick Primer”
Our Truly Messed-Up Constitution (And Those Dedicated To Keeping It That Way)
Sanford Levinson‘s Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We The People Can Correct It) is a truly depressing book. As I read it last night and this morning–in preparation for a meeting today with this semester’s Wolfe Institute Faculty Discussion Group–I grew increasingly enraged, perplexed, and then, finally, even more convincedContinue reading “Our Truly Messed-Up Constitution (And Those Dedicated To Keeping It That Way)”
The ‘Long Live the Paper Book’ Argument Needs To Mention DRM
Justin Hollander’s defense of the traditional paper book (‘Long Live Paper’, New York Times, 10 October 2012) is well-meant but given the severity of the challenge it faces from e-books, it is a relatively milquetoast argument. It gets to the nitty-gritty late, and as such is unlikely to convince those enamored of their convenient, pocket-stuffing e-readers.Continue reading “The ‘Long Live the Paper Book’ Argument Needs To Mention DRM”
Copyright Protection for Academic Works: A Bad Idea, But Who’ll Bell The Cat?
Richard Posner has written yet another interesting critique of patent and copyright law; it includes a remark of particular interest to me: At the other extreme is academic books and articles (apart from textbooks), which are produced as a byproduct of academic research that the author must conduct in order to preserve his professional reputation and that wouldContinue reading “Copyright Protection for Academic Works: A Bad Idea, But Who’ll Bell The Cat?”
The NYPD and Israeli Police: Perfect Together
As my writings on this blog will show, I am not terribly fond of the New York City Police Department. Among other things, it is excessively militarized and has a very poor record on civil liberties. (I am not going to go into an exhaustive listing here, but a quick perusal of the link aboveContinue reading “The NYPD and Israeli Police: Perfect Together”
Samir Chopra 