Lots of Interesting News

But no time to write much about them.

*The Bouchard-Taylor report is released. (You can get an abridged English version here.)From the Globe account, it seems they have taken a firm cosmotarian stance, reminiscent of Taylor's old antagonist, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. They are about to find out how Lord Durham would have felt if he had cared about French Canadian opinion.

*The always-dangerous concept of fiduciary obligations by corporate officers to bondholders has, as Malcolm X or the Reverend Wright would put it if they were corporate law nerds, come home to roost. The Quebec Court of Appeal stopped the takeover of BCE by the Ontario Teahcers Pension Plan, a $35 billion transaction. BCE is trying to get to the Supremes before June 30, which would be virtually unprecedented. (The only example I can think of where the red nine tried to move that fast was the misguided decision to give leave in the Tremblay-Daigle dispute over whether a biological father can prevent an abortion.)

*In Khadr, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that agents of the Canadian government operating in foreign parts are only exempt from the requirements of the Charter where they are acting in accordance with Canada's international law obligations. The SCC relied on Rasul and Hamdan to conclude that Guantanomo Bay was operated contrary to the Geneva Conventions at the relevant time. (Of course, the Bush administration was loud and proud in saying that the Geneva Conventions didn't apply.) This fits with my thinking that the SCOTUS's decision would inveitably embolden the judiciaries in other Western countries to help shut down the Bushian war on terror.

Update: I wonder if someone better informed about African-American culture than myself could explain what is so threatening about chickens.

Against National Self-Determination

In the wake of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of indepence, I get into an argument with libertarian Brian Moore about the merits of a "right of national self-determination."

Sex, Suffering and Virgil

The mysterious Man Who Is Thursday has an incredible post on all of the above.

Hot "Duty of Care" Action

There's an interesting discussion of "proximity," when you've got it, and when you don't at the University of Alberta Law Blog.

Update: Continuing here, with intervention from Lewis Klar.

North Polarization

Eric Posner has a brief primer on the Law of the Sea issues relating to ownership of the North Pole. It seems the North Pole lies above the underwater Lomonosov Ridge, which extends from the north of Russia to Greenland and Canada. On one interpretation, this amounts to a continental shelf for all 3 countries, and the Law of the Sea provides no rule for shared continental shelves.

Posner makes the plausible assertion that the Russian position will prevail by force of arms unless the NATO countries can get their act together.

We Can Only Be Just in Someone Else's Time -- Gastronomic Edition

It's easy to imagine that politicians "apologizing" to ethnic activists for things done generations ago is a Canadian or at least Western phenomenon.

But Papua New Guinea has held a ceremony to say sorry because nineteenth century Papuans ate some Fijian missionaries. The Fijian High Commissioner was "deeply touched."

Law Geek Heaven

Jack Balkin and Eugene Volokh engage in one of those diavlog thingies about the First and Second Amendments.

Really Cold War

University of Chicago Law Prof Eric Posner says the US should reverse its position opposing Canada's claim over the Northwest Passage to establish a common front against Russia's arctic ambitions.

Conrad Black: "Worst Kind of Imperial CEO"

So concludes conservative corporate law prof Stephen Bainbridge. Bainbridge isn't quite sure that this was an appropriate case for the criminal law, but he observes (a) that Deleware Vice Chancellor Leo Strine listened to his testimony in a civil trial; (b) Strine concluded he was a liar; and (c) the reputation of the Delaware courts has been proven in the marketplace.

List of Canadian Blawgs

Vancouver Law Librarian Blog has a very useful, and frequently updated, listhere.

Is Race a Valid Scientific Concept?

The existence of sub-species isn't particularly controversial for non-human animals (as we say on the West Coast). But for obvious reasons it's a tricky one when it comes to a certain East African ape. Unfortunately, ignoring ethnic differences in susceptibilities to disease and (quite possibly) reactions to medicines will kill people, especially people who don't belong to the dominant ethncities in lands of advanced medicine. The New Republic has made an interesting discussion on the subject available to non-subscribers here and here.

NEVER discuss religion or politics or women with Moslems.

And some more good advice from the World War II-era War Department.

Via Rob Farley.

Lazy Linking Again

A friend of this site has a post up at The Court on the exciting subject of the constitutional principles governing territoriality of provincial tax regimes. There is also the beginnings of a debate about last week's interjurisdictional immunity cases we recently had a go at.

Schools, Language, Religion and Justin Trudeau

There's an interesting discussion on these subjects and more at Andy's. The Pithlord takes the cynical view that the bull market in French immersion is as a result of its function as a separate school system for middle-class whites. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

With All Thy Might

Matthew Yglesias fights the good fight against "new ideas" here.

Bertha Wilson 1923-2007

Bertha Wilson died on Sunday. Undoubtedly, and for better or for worse, a major architect of contemporary Canada.

I think it's unfortunate that there was no one on the right of the court to take her and Dickson on at the necessary intellectual level.

That part of my Singh blogathon completed before I got stalled can be found here and here.

He Makes It Look as Easy as Pi

Nathan Whitlock has posted a hilarious takedown of Yann Martel's incredibly irritating defence of federal arts subsidies in the Globe a week ago.

"Preventive War" and Preventative Diplomacy

Daniel Larison calls out the cafeteria Catholics at First Things* for rejecting Church teaching on the immorality of "preventive war." Since all states potentially threaten their neighbours, if war could be justified on the basis of "prevention", then all aggressive wars would be preventive ones. Therefore, the Vatican's position is a necessary implication of holding on to any just war theory at all. The point is a so obvious, one despairs that Larison has to make it. But he does, and does it with his characteristic erudition, so I commend it unto you.

I also commend Matthew Yglesias's response to Dennis Ross. Ross thinks it makes sense to impose, as a precondition on negotiations with Abbas and Fatah, that they prevent any attack on Israel by their sworn enemies in Hamas. Yglesias makes the obvious point that imposing such conditions would make it trivially easy for Hamas to prevent any negotiation from occurring. The fact that Ross was Clinton's main man on the Israel-Palestine dispute and Yglesias is a snot-nosed kid may explain why the situation in the Middle East has gotten as bad as it has.

*Since they have rejected "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (Fifth by the Catholic numbering) in favour of Reagan's Eleventh Commandment.

Update After 14 comments: I think the discussion has been interesting. In the end, Andy seems (to me) to retreat from arguing that preventive war is justifiable to arguing that the war was necessary to enforce the peace terms Iraq accepted after 1991. I disagree "on the facts", but I accept that such a justification isn't in principle contrary to the just war tradition.

But while I recognize that some arguments along these lines were advanced, the Bush administration clearly did present itself as putting forward a new doctrine. Lee at Thinking Reed has the goods.

Further Update: On the Internet, you can even get a discussion by an "Independent Catholic Priest" on how Augustine's comments on the Third Punic War anticipate the arguments about Iraq. (Via Thinking Reed)

"War Nerd" on Nerdy War Movie

The war nerd watches 300 so I don't have to, and takes down V.D. Hanson in the process.

Most affecting excerpt:

It's downright hilarious the way this movie punishes every smart character. Every time someone wants to argue with the war party in this movie, he's evil. Everybody who talks in a normal tone of voice is evil. Snyder shows two scenes where the Spartans murder Persian envoys arriving under a flag of truce. And both times, you're supposed to cheer.

Since when do Americans cheer when truce parties are murdered? Well, that's pretty easy to answer, actually: since Iraq.

Well Said

Analytical feminist Lindsay Beyerstein makes a great point:

People who put too much emotional stake in nature/nurture questions are usually trying to shirk the harder work of making a defensible value judgment.