May's Books of the Month

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND LAWYERLY IMPRESSIONS

Dan Drezner notes that Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner say the following about international law: [I]nternational law matters but that it is less powerful and less significant than public officials, legal experts, and the media believe. International la...

The interesting complaint I've heard is that Freakonomics doesn't do anything that sociologists don't do already. Sociologists will use the same techniques, and its not like economics has a lock on regression analysis. The book sounds fun, but not particularly groundbreaking except to other economists.

I don't know of any sociologists who make use of intervening variables, natural experiments, &c. in the way Levitt does. Can you name some of their work?

I like this passage: "International law... is simply a product of states pursuing their interests on the international stage. It does not pull states towards compliance contrary to their interests".

One thing that all states can agree threatens them is the citizen's ownership of small arms. Far more than this citizen threatens others. I expect there to be a worldwide movement against "terrorist militias" and an astroturf-popular movement against private gun ownership.

Is it Levitt or Leavitt?

There was a good debate club back in January about the thesis of the Posner/Goldsmith book. Posner argued against Oona Hathaway from Yale.