Anti-Climacus

WAR IS OVER (IF YOU WANT IT): I've sat on this post from Helen for a few days, on bias in academia. I don't see a lot of it, and in the area of my academic work I see precisely none (but then, I think Allen Buchanan's correct on most things he writes about international law, so perhaps I'm exactly the sort who wouldn't see it), but mostly my response is: go forth and do good research. If you can write something compelling and pathbreaking, you'll end up in an at least decent job.

Relatedly, I have about half-a-dozen unfinished posts where I take issue with various accounts of international law.* I've often wondered at the paucity of conservative theories of international law (as opposed to conservative-within-the-liberal-tradition, a position I'm happy to occupy). The popular discourse within conservatism tends toward a reductivist theory of some kind, where 'sovereignty,' 'national interest,' or 'power' becomes the frame in which all things are understood, and all decisions are to be made. It is, in its way, the philosophical equivalent of 'any color you want, so long as it's black,' and in this way, a reversal of the 'conservatism as disposition, not ideology' position. Consequently, there's not much to say--if you see the world that way, you'll continue to assimilate facts to the theory, as needed, and if you don't, it's a bafflingly oversimplifying choice. The liberal institutionalist/constructivist critique of realism is basically correct, and insomuch as I've chosen sides, it's with the institutionalist and the constructivist. The further consequence is that I'm not sure those things are worth blogging about anymore (my time writing on international law being better spent explaining what's wrong with IL selecting on the dependent variable), so the blog will be undergoing a bit of a midlife crisis/hiatus until I figure that out.


*Including one that may yet see the light of day in which the Rule of Law is supposedly threatened by Congress acting well within its powers to revise past law. It may be morally undesirable, and practically wrong, but that doesn't mean it undermines Rule of Law.