Reflections

 
[Prefatory Note: The following text was published in May 2018 in the Yale Journal of International Law. Professor ONUMA’s text is the best comprehensive treatment of international law, and additionally raises crucial questions about the legitimating impact of a transcivilizational approach, which implies dewesternization as international law up to this point evolved as an instrument for regulating relations among Western sovereign states and exerting hegemonic control over the non-Western members of international society. An indispensable book.]

 
[Prefatory Note:  This post is my review of an important critical study of the deplorable conditions of law and politics in the current global setting. The author grounds his diagnosis and proposals on a philosophical interpretation of this subject-matter, but the radical vision although appealing gives little attention to how such a vision can become a political project, and so this learned text creates an impression of apolitical utopianism. This review will be shortly published in the American Journal of International Law.]
 
 
 

[Prefatory Note: Slightly revised at the end.]
 
GAZA: Grief, Horror, Outrage, Remembering
 
GRIEF
 
How can one not feel intense grief for the young Palestinians who out of despair and fury joined the Great March of Return, and so often found death and severe injury awaiting them as they approached the border unarmed!!?
 

[Prefatory Note: This post is an expanded and somewhat modified version of an opinion piece published by the online publication, global-e on May 1, 2018. It seeks to raise questions and suggest different ways of conceiving of democratic governance.]
 
The End of Democracy?

Postscript: Additional Indonesian Impressions
 
It occurs to me that two additional impressions of Indonesia seem relevant enough to be worth a short supplement to my post of a few days ago.
 
Multituli, Max Havelaar, or the coffee auction of the Dutch trading company  (Penguin Classics, 1866)
 

Impressions from a Third Visit to Indonesia
 
 
Indonesia Visits
 

Attacking Syria
 

Toward the Creation of a World Parliament: Strongly Recommended Reading