What’s So Funny About That?

This paper argues that it is impossible to know why we laugh. There are a number of theories that attempt to explain why we laugh but they all have limitations. It is possible, however, to know what makes us laugh and 45 techniques that inform humor are listed and used to analyze a number of humorous texts. These techniques can also be used to study the humor of different nations to determine which they favor and which they neglect, thus offering insights into national character.     

Pyro-Terrorism—The Threat of Arson-Induced Forest Fires as a Future Terrorist Weapon of Mass Destruction

The United States is at significant risk of a future pyro-terrorist attack—when terrorists unleash the latent energy in the nation's forests to achieve the effect of a weapon of mass destruction—the threat, must be defined America's vulnerabilities understood, and action taken to mitigate this danger to the United States.     

Domestic judicial defiance and the authority of international legal regimes

Tensions and occasional overt defiance of international courts suggest that compliance with international regimes is not a self-evident choice for domestic judges. I develop a formal theory of domestic judicial defiance in which domestic and supranational judges vie for jurisprudential authority in a non-hierarchical setting. The model emphasises the role of domestic non-compliance costs and power asymmetries in determining the conduct of domestic and international judges. I argue that the EU represents a special case of a particularly effective international regime. Weak domestic courts have little to gain from an escalated conflict with the European court of Justice. But even domestic judicial superpowers like the German Federal Constitutional Court have strong incentives to seek mutual accommodation with European judges. The analysis also yields new insights into concepts, such as “judicial dialogue” and “constitutional pluralism” that have featured prominently in the legal literature, and suggests new hypotheses for empirical research.     

Research on African Women since 1972: A Commentary

This article discusses several problematic aspects of the call for reparations to Africa for the slave trade. The call for reparations is based on questionable interpretations of international law, and questionable interpretations of history. There are debates regarding both the numbers of slaves, and the characteristics of slavery, in the Americas, the Arab world, and Africa itself, which influence consideration of whether reparations are justified. There are also debates regarding both the contribution of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to Western development, and how the trade under-developed Africa. Thus, the call for reparations is heavily based on a counterfactual approach. Nevertheless, serious discussion of whether the West owes reparations to Africa for the slave trade might deflect the future consequences of political resentment of the West in Africa.