There’s a joke about a group of friends finishing up their meal at a local restaurant. One friend puts down the cutlery, pushes back the chair, and declares with conviction: “this food was bad and the portions were too small.” And so it is with the Paris Climate Change agreement. The Paris Agreement is bad [...]

Everything old is new again, and court-packing is no exception. In 1937, faced with a conservative Supreme Court that consistently invalidated his New Deal legislation, President Roosevelt announced a plan to increase the size of the court and add justices who would rule in his favor. It was a bridge too far. While Roosevelt’s plan [...]

The most recent disciplinary order issued against a federal judge vividly demonstrates a major shortcoming of the federal judicial disciplinary system—transparency. In September, the Judicial Council of the Tenth Circuit publicly reprimanded Kansas federal district court judge Carlos Murguia. The judge’s offenses included “sexually harassing Judiciary employees,” habitually tardiness, and an extramarital affair. To the detriment [...]

Rule of Law and Transitional Justice: A New Islamic Discipline “The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree): but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah . . . But indeed, if any show patience and forgive, that would truly be an exercise of courageous [...]

China is exerting an enormous amount of power and influence over American companies even to the point of potentially enforcing its own laws. This has been a slow and largely secretive expansion over a period of years. It is a circumstance modern law has not foreseen and seems largely ill-equipped to deal with. Let’s start [...]

In the indictment against sixteen environmental activists now on trial outside Istanbul, George Soros and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) are mentioned over 300 times. Neither is in any way linked to the defendants or to the 2013 public demonstrations that took place at Gezi Park, yet somehow George Soros is accused of being the [...]

Over the past several years, the use of e-cigarettes has increased greatly. While the original demographic for e-cigarettes was intended to be legal adults who already smoked traditional cigarettes, these numbers seem to be higher amongst a younger population than expected. Parents and guardians filed lawsuits alleging that the marketing campaigns lead by popular manufacturers, [...]

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg rejected a request for referral under article 43 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention) by Italy last week making the Chamber’s October 7th decision in the case Marcello Viola v. Italy a final judgment. The ECHR has decided that an “irreducible [...]

Institutionalized by big law firms since the 1980s in the United States, pro bono today has become a global phenomenon. Given its strong legal profession and market, a unique outlier is Germany, where pro bono is not completely legal. The challenge is not the lack of need or supply of pro bono, but the ambiguity [...]

Chief Hinga Norman, head of the brutal Civil Defense Force, during the monstrous civil war in the West African country of Sierra Leone—part of larger unrest that engulfed neighboring Liberia and others—admonished his men to kill every living thing down to the ants in Pujehun. That they did. This was emblematic of the brutality that [...]