Political Dimensions of the Israeli Settlements Issue: Historic Opportunities and Challenges

There is a danger inherent in devoting a panel to a discussion of the political aspects of the Israeli settlements issue: in attempting to discuss everything, we could have ended up talking about nothing because many practitioners and scholars view the settlements as primarily a political project. The multidisciplinary nature of this conference reflected our belief that the settlement issue is deeper and wider than "simply politics." Yet, we were not free from the challenge of focusing a panel on the political aspects of the settlements in a way that makes a real contribution.     

Rational Choice and Progress in the Study of Ethnic Conflict: A Review Essay

Through an analysis of eight recent books and a number of articles and papers, this article evaluates recent progress in the study of ethnic conflict, including large scale conflicts and episodic riots. Four main approaches have been applied to the study of ethnic conflict: rational choice, constructivism, essentialism, and structuralism (or realism). This evaluation of recent work includes that rational choice has been the least successful of the approaches; its focus on individuals' pursuit of (mainly) material benefits makes it difficult to recognize or to admit the explanatory power of nationalist feelings that do not depend on the prospect of material benefits. Constructivism has been the most influential approach over the past few decades but until recently has suffered from methodological weaknesses that have hindered testing. Essentialism has been out favor for as long as constructivism has been in, but recent methodological improvements have produced strong work that has resurrected this approach. Structuralism is the youngest approach; it is still immature but has already yielded important new insights. Some eclectic approaches are emerging that combine strengths of the latter three approaches; it remains to be seen whether comparable eclecticism will combine rational choice with one or more of the others.

Daniel L. Byman, Keeping the Peace: Lasting Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

Donald L. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

Stuart J. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Monica Duffy Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisibility of Territory(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

Barbara F. Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).     

Restitution in America: Why the US Refuses to Join the Global Restitution Party

In the past generation, restitution law has emerged as a globalphenomenon. From its Oxbridge home, restitution migrated tothe rest of the Commonwealth, and ongoing Europeanization projectshave brought the common law of restitution into contact withthe Romanist concept of unjust enrichment, further internationalizingthis movement. In contrast, in the United States, scholarlyinterest in restitution, in terms of books, articles, treatises,symposia and courses on restitution, is meager. Similarly, whilerestitution, equity and tracing cases receive considerable treatmentat the highest levels of the English judiciary, US courts seemuninterested in these issues, rarely producing the theory-ladenopinions that have become quite common in the House of Lords.The situation is particularly curious because restitution isgenerally thought to be the invention of late nineteenth-centuryAmerican scholars. This article explains this divergence. Iargue that the Commonwealth restitution discourse is largelya product of pre- or anti-realist legal thought which generatesscepticism within the American academic-legal establishment.The article identifies the two dominant camps in American privatelaw thought—left-leaning redistributionalists and thecentre-right legal economists—and shows that neither hasany use for the Commonwealth's discourse. I conclude by analysingthe emerging drafts of the Restatement of Restitution and forecastthe future of American restitution law.