Facing Trump II: America's Urgent Obligation to Rethink Nuclear Command Authority
“The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the horrible news.” Berthold Brecht An Existential Task Until the end of his presidency – and even after his open complicity in subverting the United States Constitution on January 6, 2021 – Donald J. Trump held effectively unchecked nuclear command authority. Now, after multiple criminal [...]
On 20 July 2022, a man who had recently lost a parliamentary election was appointed President of Sri Lanka. A closer look at what led to Ranil Wickramasinghe’s presidential reign highlights an array of Constitutional quirks that threaten to continue to undermine democracy in the island nation. Wickramasinghe was hoisted into the presidency after obtaining [...]
India Must Reform its Anti-Defection Law to Prevent Further Corrosion of Democracy
“Defectors often cause more difficulty than disinterested disbelievers” – Neal Ash Maxwell, American scholar, educator, and religious leader. Recent events in the Indian state of Maharashtra reaffirm the existence of glaring loopholes in a law aimed at bolstering political stability in India. The recent fall of the democratically elected government led by the state’s former [...]
Preventing Nuclear War: Legal Obligations for an Imperiled Planet
“Scholars build the structure of peace in the world.” Babylonian Talmud; Order Zera’im, Tractate Berakoth, IX Background of the Problem Back in the late 1960s, at Yale Law School and Princeton University’s Department of Politics, a series of joint-programs was developed under the heading of World Order Studies. This advanced academic series focused upon the [...]
The Gold Code Standard Revisited: The Danger Of Sole Presidential Authority Over Nuclear Weapons
On January 8, 2021, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took the extraordinary step of publicly revealing she had talked with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, about “available precautions for preventing an unstable President from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” [...]
"Good Genes," Proud Boys and White Supremacy: An International Law Perspective
“The goal is to dominate the street.” – US President Donald J. Trump, June 1, 2020 There are disturbing connections. Before openly embracing the “Proud Boys” during his first debate with Democrat opponent Joe Biden, Donald J. Trump praised the value of “good genes” in Minnesota. Though such a seemingly “positive” evocation might not normally [...]
What If Trump's Electoral Defeat Coincides with a Nuclear Crisis?
“The masses have followed the magicians again and again…Socrates and Plato were the first to take up the struggle against them in clear awareness of what was at stake.” – Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1952) On absolutely all matters of existential survival, individual or collective, candor is indispensable. In connection with [...]
The European Commission ruled on Tuesday that Ireland may recover up to €13 billion from Apple after the company benefited from undue tax breaks. The commission ruled the tax breaks were illegal based on...
The invasion of Iraq was an initial military success and led to complete destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime. The military forces established the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) on April 21, 2003, citing UN Security Resolution 1483 as justification for its...
Even since human slavery was officially banned through the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, human trafficking continues to present an ongoing problem in the US and abroad. The US State Department reports that between two to four million...
