Link Banana

Seeking refuge in the Dutch embassy, he’s ended his campaign to defeat Mugabe. For those wondering why, this gallery — absolutely not for the faint of heart — gives some indication of the reasons.

America has more prisoners on death row than any country but Pakistan. (China’s figures are open to dispute.) It’s either a triumph of justice that they’re still alive — and likely appealing their cases — or a damnable pity that they’re there at all.

Those angered by the system of justice being deployed at Guantanamo should probably blow their lids about what’s passing for justice in some cases in Afghanistan. Here, for example, was enough evidence to convict a man to eight years in prison:

“Confessions/Admissions/Incriminating Statements: None”

“Witnesses: None”

“Physical Evidence: None”

“Photographs: None”

(via brijit)

A interesting/troubling study:

A new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that three-strikes laws like California’s, while discouraging criminals from doing things like smoking pot or shoplifting, may push those who do continue in a life of crime to commit more violent offenses. The study’s author, Radha Iyengar, argues that this is because under such laws, felons with a pair of strikes against them have little to lose (and often much to gain) by committing serious crimes rather than minor offenses.

Ms. Mills got unusually little, especially considering English divorce law:

England is reputed to have the most generous divorce laws in the world. Not only are the couple’s assets supposed to be divided roughly equally, but also—rare in a rich country—everything gets thrown into the pot, including wealth acquired before the marriage. And prenuptial agreements are not recognised under English law.

Speaking of the rule of law… Noah Feldman says that much of the appeal of Shariah in Muslim countries is based on the idea that it offers justice for all.

The upshot is that the system of Islamic law as it came to exist allowed a great deal of leeway. That is why today’s advocates of Shariah as the source of law are not actually recommending the adoption of a comprehensive legal code derived from or dictated by Shariah — because nothing so comprehensive has ever existed in Islamic history. To the Islamist politicians who advocate it or for the public that supports it, Shariah generally means something else. It means establishing a legal system in which God’s law sets the ground rules, authorizing and validating everyday laws passed by an elected legislature. In other words, for them, Shariah is expected to function as something like a modern constitution.

In school, I was told that “the rule of law” was good for stability and good for economic growth. What exactly “the rule of law” was I was never completely sure of. Turns out there are essentially two definitions:

Thick definitions treat the rule of law as the core of a just society. In this version, the concept is inextricably linked to liberty and democracy. Its adherents say a country can be spoken of as being ruled by law only if the state’s power is constrained and if basic freedoms, such as those of speech and association, are guaranteed. …

Thin definitions are more formal. The important things, on this account, are not democracy and morality but property rights and the efficient administration of justice. Laws must provide stability. They do not necessarily have to be moral or promote human rights. America’s southern states in the Jim Crow era were governed by the rule of law on thin definitions, but not on thick.

Nicholas Kristof’s latest column is worth perusing. He makes a rather cogent argument for both the repudiation of torture and swift justice for all detainees at Guantanamo.

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system.

Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That’s us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.

If the Bush administration appointed an Under Secretary of State for Antagonizing the Islamic World, with advice from a Blue Ribbon Commission for Sullying America’s Image, it couldn’t have done a more systematic job of discrediting our reputation around the globe. Instead of using American political capital to push for peace in the Middle East or Darfur, it is using it to force-feed Mr. Hajj.

To round up the women trio — a semi-intentional sequel to the semi-intentional futre of technology trio of earlier — The Economist says that though Saudi Arabia in particular (and the Arab world generally) still has far too many repressive rules governing the rights of women, things are indeed getting better.

But there are signs that things may be getting a little better for the kingdom’s women. Laws forbidding violence against women are now being drafted. Women are now allowed to stay in hotels unaccompanied. The government has given initial approval for the establishment of the first Saudi women’s rights body. And the first women’s football match was played in the eastern province earlier this month, with men excluded from the stadium entirely. There are even suggestions that an infamous ban on women drivers may be lifted later this year. Such improvements are slight, but welcome. And they reflect marginal improvements elsewhere in the Middle East.

This is good news, even if it’s only happening slowly.

Turkey’s government has taken on the issue of free speech and is expected as early as Friday to announce a weakening of a law against insulting Turkishness, an amendment that is considered a key measure of the democratic maturity of this Muslim country as it tries to gain acceptance to the European Union.

But while that law, called Article 301, is known to many in the West — Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist, was prosecuted under 301 — it is just one of many laws that limit freedom of expression for intellectuals in Turkey. The law under which Mr. Yayla was prosecuted, for example, dates from 1951 and is not even part of the penal code.

While the change in Article 301 is likely to stop the wanton application of that law, the single most common statute used against critics of Turkey’s official line, the government was unable to remove it from the books completely, as liberals here had wanted.

Portfolio has an interesting piece about the state of property rights in China. Though I think Mr. Kurlantzick may be overreaching in suggesting revolution, how few rights people have is mildly jarring to American sensibilities.

Very few of the evictions in China would qualify as legal in other countries, and even in China the legality is murky. Because the state technically owns all urban land and the average Chinese citizen simply owns the right to live on the land for a time, government officials have massive leverage on homeowners and can force them to leave their property without paying much—if anything—in compensation.

The venerable Steven Pinker had a fascinating piece in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about morality. It’s a very good and wide-ranging piece, but I found this particularly striking:

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

In the wake of Charles Taylor — former president of Liberia — going on trial at The Hague, The Economist points to a very hopeful trend: an end to the peaceful and blameless retirement that too many third-world strong men have too long gotten and taken for granted.

However brutal or corrupt, Africa’s leaders used to shield one another from justice for fear that their turn could come next. But the remarkable spread of international justice over the past decade has brought about an equally remarkable change in attitudes towards prosecuting former heads of state, not just in Africa but throughout the world. No fewer than ten former presidents and military dictators are facing legal proceedings for human-rights offences and/or corruption, some in international tribunals, others in their own domestic courts, a few in other countries’ courts.

If you prefer video, Mark Goldberg and Mark Vlassic ably discuss the same topic in this episode of Bloggingheads.

Slate’s Dahlia Litwick’s not shy about wearing her convictions on her sleeve in her critical summary of the day’s arguments in Indiana’s voter identification case before the Supreme Court.

To recap: I fear I am counting five justices who believe that a nonexistent problem can be constitutionally cured by burdening the fundamental right to vote. Happy byproduct? Doing away with those pesky facial challenges that liberals like to use to address massive injustices. So in the guise of doing away with hypothetical future challenges to a law, the court is poised to uphold a law that solves hypothetical future problems in voting. And for those of you wondering why the court didn’t see fit to release audio for today’s monumentally important argument, the answer remains, who knows? But here’s one guess: The justices didn’t want to be caught on tape sounding like the same 5-4 court that decided Bush v. Gore, even if nothing has changed.