Academic Commentary

“The world is contending with the increasing incidence and severity of a wide range of highly infectious diseases.” These words appear in Responsibility for Epidemics, an article I wrote in 2018. There have of course been dire warnings about a global pandemic for a while. In Responsibility for Epidemics, I argue that a broader conceptualization [...]

The world in a plague year is a world turned upside down. Everything familiar becomes strange, and everything normal becomes peculiar. Commodities become scarce and luxuries become worthless. Leisure becomes insufferable and labor becomes precious. The great become small and the small reveal their greatness. But one thing is constant. The plagiarism police remain vigilant. [...]

These are difficult times. The world is unraveling around the edges. Societies are reeling under the threat of “The Virus”. Fear is spreading faster than the virus itself. People are looking to survive. Survival instincts are or could start to set in. Citizens are also looking for decisive and strong leadership by those in power [...]

Everybody knows that the Coronavirus pandemic is an economic catastrophe. Small businesses are already failing and people are losing their jobs. The government can and should do everything possible to mitigate their suffering. But in at least one economic sector, there is another option. The arts sector is struggling for the same reason many other [...]

“Is it an end that draws near or a beginning?” – Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age (1951) There are times when a grievous threat can menace friends and enemies alike. Still, in these conspicuously “bad times,” such a potent threat can also bring adversaries to once-unimagined levels of cooperation. The current and ongoing [...]

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, law schools face an existential crisis. After shuttering their buildings and moving their classes online, they must ask whether they can and should assign grades for the spring 2020 semester. Many have already decided to go pass/fail. And many more are sure to follow. But I don’t believe [...]

In the wake of the conviction and sentencing of Roger Stone, for obstructing the congressional inquiry into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham suggested that President Donald Trump “has all the legal authority in the world to review this case, in terms of commuting the sentence or pardoning Mr. [...]

The US Supreme Court has struggled for decades with how colleges and universities may use racial and ethnic preferences in admissions. At present, the law is this: (1) an institution of higher education may consider the race and ethnicity of applicants as a factor in admissions decisions for purposes of “diversity,” provided that it is [...]

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the most militarily powerful nation in the world, the US has largely been able to evade international justice, even when engaging in conduct for which other nations have been held accountable. To date, the vast majority of international criminal courts and tribunals have instead prosecuted [...]

On February 29th, the United States officials and Taliban representatives signed an agreement aiming to bring an end to the 19 years of conflict in Afghanistan. The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan weeks after the September 2001 attack in New York by al-Qaeda. The Taliban were ousted from power but they became United [...]