Some readers of this site will know of the wonderful books of Misleading Cases written by A P Herbert, which cast a wry satirical eye on the application of legal principles to real life. See for example his impeccable reasoning in the legendary case of Fardell v Potts, which analyses […]
As the myriad delgates wend their various snowy ways from the Copenhagen Global Warming Summit, what is the overall assessment? Not UN, but UM. Unambiguous Mess. Key aspects of the whole thing were a priori perverse from a Basic Diplomatic Technique point of view. Let’s audaciously and even hopefully assume that the science is […]
Here is Baroness Ashton laying out her stall for EU collective foreign policy, in an ill-drafted text piling on one wordy cliche after another: I believe that a lot can be achieved with quiet diplomacy. We need people who can listen as well as talk, and who can work behind […]
Time is short. We can’t fret about the world and its awful problems 24/7/365. So, the question: how to allocate one’s moral energy? Some people campaign on the risks to small remote tribal communities threatened by a tidal wave of modernisation. Others demand reparations for real or asserted massive wrongs […]
Mr. President, Members of the Court, I am a devoted but disgruntled South Australian. “I hereby declare the independence of South Australia.” What has happened? Precisely nothing. Have I committed an internationally wrongful act in your presence? Of course not. Have I committed an ineffective act? Very likely. I have […]
Americans have such an energetic writing style: Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is? … There’s no other way to say it: Barack […]
I have been back on the mediation trail, this time leading a successful two-hour negotiation between two people who had fallen out over a private business deal. Flushed from that triumph I headed for the ADR Group conference in Oxford where many leading UK mediators gathered to mull over trends […]
Let’s pull together some news about the UK Foreign Office in the word’s first blogged FCO Roundup. Or is the news that it has … gone AWOL? * * * * * What has the FCO to say about the elections in Honduras? Not much. HM Government do not have […]
The Climate Summit is in disarray wails the Guardian, all because of a leaked position paper which suggests an attempted rich country stitch-up, or something like that. Points to note: this is above all a Negotiation on a vast and therefore ultimately simple scale Poor countries say: Rich countries caused the problem, […]
Most readers will not be avid enough chess fans, I suspect. And so you may have missed the famous Karpov v Kasparov game from the 1985 World Championship match, when Kasparov’s knight metamorphed into a vast octopus (as Ray Keene put it) on Karpov’s d3 square and throttled Karpov’s position with […]
