Confessions of a Luddite

The internet has been down again for a while. The maintenance guy said that it has been a problem all across Copenhagen...I don't buy it. I just wanted to drop a quick line...it looks like I may not get to the pics until this weekend. There are just too many and I have too much to do for class. My human rights book is not in so I get to read 4 court opinions off my computer screen, which sounds about as good as dental surgery to me.

My war crimes book has some neat, high-European, America-bashing in it. Its funny cause the book is completely ignorant on American law...it mischaracterizes American sovereign immunity and makes us sound like an absolute monarchy.

In one instance it points to American courts applying our Alien Torts Claim Act extra-territorially as evidence of our tendency to want to be "world police." What is funny is, first, the court case it relies upon for this understanding was one circuit appellate decision that was part of split jurisprudence in our federal appellate courts...this split was resolved by the Supreme Court last year and the case referred to is no longer legal precedent. Not even a first year law student would make such a mistake. If the book published before the Supreme Court decision, as it did, it is still dishonest not to point to the fact that the case cited was a minority appellate court doctrine and resolution was pending certiori at the Supreme Court...you could be sanctioned as an American attorney for such inadequate case history. Secondly, the case that the book refers too critically is a case that is lauded by liberals and human rights scholars for showing a proactive tendency by the American courts to recognize the importance of international human rights law. The alternative appellate approach would gut the ATCA and limit it to originalist international violations like piracy.

So "Americans are world cops," "Americans do not respect human rights," "Americans are isolationist," well, what is it? How about, Europeans do not understand federal republicanism...who again still has monarchies...and for all the high-minded, Eurocentric, cosmopolitanism its nice to add that there is still probably no more a racist and nationalistic continent in the world than Europe...and huge world problems still abound from European colonialism...which Europe has conveniently turned a blind eye to in its commiserating over the damage it has done to itself in the last 100 years...1938 was not to long ago my European friends...