Ethics & International Affairs articles from December 2006

Ethics & International Affairs archives from December 2006

The legitimacy of global governance institutions.
December 1, 2006... "Legitimacy" has both a normative and a sociological meaning. To say that an institution is legitimate in the normative sense is to assert that it has the right to rule--where ruling includes promulgating rules and attempting to secure...

Counterfactuals and the proportionality criterion.
December 1, 2006... In order for a resort to war or military force to be morally justified, it is widely held that in addition to there being a just cause, the good achieved by the war must be proportionate to the harm caused. As I write this, the importance of...

Killing soldiers.
December 1, 2006... A riddle in the ethics of war concerns whether lethal defensive force may be justifiably used against aggressing soldiers who are morally innocent. In this essay I argue that although there might be reasons for excusing soldiers as individuals,...

Judicial globalization in the service of self-government.
December 1, 2006... For at least the past several decades, judges around the world have been looking beyond their own states' jurisprudence to international law and the decisions of foreign courts in order to apply domestic law. This widespread practice is part of...

And now from the green zone ... reflections on the Iraq tribunal's Dujail Trial.(SYMPOSIUM: THE TRIAL OF SADDAM HUSSEIN)
December 1, 2006... The Iraq tribunal is an odd creature. (1) It is an Iraqi-led mechanism designed and supported by foreigners. It is based on international law but relies heavily on Iraqi legal tradition and procedures. And it is a postconflict initiative in the...

Saddam Hussein's trial meets the "fairness" test.(SYMPOSIUM: THE TRIAL OF SADDAM HUSSEIN)
December 1, 2006... War crimes trials are often controversial, and few such trials in history have been more so than that of Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq. In this trial, controversy has raged over the very nature of war crimes justice, the...

A New World Order.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... A New World Order, Anne-Marie Slaughter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 368 pp., $45 cloth, $18.95 paper. A New World Order highlights a new global reality of transgovernmental networks of governance and their potential...

Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality, Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), 288 pp., $24 paper. It is striking how many contemporary political calamities involve an...

The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Manus I. Midlarsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 480 pp., $75 cloth, $28.99 paper. In his recent contribution to the growing literature on comparative genocide studies,...

Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Reading Across the Lines.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Reading Across the Lines, Anthony F. Lang, Jr. and John Williams, eds. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 256 pp., $69 cloth. This useful collection aims to introduce scholars of international...

The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall.
December 1, 2006... The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall, Ian Bremmer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 320 pp., $26 cloth. Things get worse before they get better. Economists noticed that a country's trade deficit follows this...