That’s the title of an article by New York Times reporter Max Fisher. He summarizes, “By most measures – with one glaring exception – people around the world are better off than ever. So why doesn’t it feel that way, especially to Americans?” Scanning the headlines, it’s easy to conclude that something has broken. The … Continue reading Is the World Really Falling Apart, or Does It Just Feel That Way?
Princeton sociology professor Paul Starr wrote an essay in the Washington Post, Conservatives Hope to Turn Back the Cultural Clock. Can They Succeed? He writes that “[r]etrofuturism is a term for imaginative works that envision a future out of the past,” and he compares the Supreme Court’s abortion and other recent decisions to “prohibition and … Continue reading Retrofuturism on the Supreme Court
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie is an avid reader with a particular interest in American history. In today’s column, he describes various books he has been reading lately. Two of the books are relevant to the recent audacious decisions by the Supreme Court majority to radically redirect legal doctrine by using dubious jurisprudential methods. … Continue reading What Jamelle Bouie is Reading
Susanne Terry, Jacqueline Font-Guzmán, and Bernard Mayer wrote this open letter with advice for dispute resolution colleagues about difficult political, economic, and moral issues raised by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Click the title of this post to read the letter.
This post provides excerpts from an op-ed by Neal Katyal, one of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s former clerks. Mr. Katyal describes Justice Breyer’s humility, recognition of his own biases, and openness to considering others’ points of view. There was, in short, a constitutional humility about Breyer. He didn’t pretend to know the answer to every … Continue reading Humble Listening on the Bench
On January 19, the Supreme Court rejected former President Trump’s request to block release of some of his White House records to the Congressional January 6 Committee. In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeals’s decision authorizing release of the documents. The Court of Appeals ruled that the right to waive … Continue reading Justice Kavanaugh’s Good Analysis of Confidentiality
“The central question we face today is: Who decides?” So began the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s recent decision to block implementation of OSHA’s covid regulation. Although the dissent vigorously disagrees with the majority’s decision, it agrees about what is the central issue in the case: “Underlying everything else in this dispute is a … Continue reading Who Decides
This is a sequel to my post last week, My Covid Perceived Injurious Experiences (PIE). It describes more PIEs and critiques the Supreme Court’s ghastly decision blocking implementation of the OSHA regulation protecting employees of large employers. I wanted to publish my post last week to express perspectives that a lot of people share and … Continue reading More Covid PIEs and the Alice-in-Wonderland Supreme Court Decision Endangering Workers
Bernie Mayer and Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán wrote a new book, The Neutrality Trap: Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change. Here’s an excerpt from the flyer: The message at the heart of The Neutrality Trap is that the wisest and ultimately most effective way to deal with our most profound problems is to avoid the lure … Continue reading The Neutrality Trap
I got covid. So did my wife, Ann. Our daughter and son-in-law stayed with us for the week leading up to Christmas, and they spent some time with his family. We assume that we got it from them and they got it from his family. Throughout the pandemic, Ann and I have been very cautious. … Continue reading My Covid Perceived Injurious Experiences
