Showing 1 - 10 of 10
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 08/01/2019
» President Donald Trump, in a meeting with congressional Democrats on Friday said he was prepared for the partial government shutdown to continue for months -- or even years -- if he doesn't get the money he wants for a wall along the Mexican border. It's not hard to see how that prediction comes true. Both sides have framed the issue such that a victory for one side on funding a border wall entails defeat for the other. Neither side has much incentive to compromise.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 20/03/2018
» Suppose President Donald Trump's foreign policy is random. I mean really random: Like random luck, designed only in so far as to fluctuate wildly between different, opposing strategic views.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 22/11/2017
» When you get rid of your dictator, is it important to follow the rules? That delicate question is dominating the transition-in-progress in Zimbabwe, where long-time President Robert Mugabe has refused to step down despite the demands of the public, the army and his own political party.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 05/10/2017
» The secession of a region without constitutional authority is a big deal, as referendums in Catalonia and Kurdistan have shown in the last week. To get a sense of the possible consequences, think of the US Civil War, which started because Southern states insisted they could secede while Northern states said such a right was nowhere in the US Constitution.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 29/09/2017
» It's good news that women will soon be able to drive in Saudi Arabia. But as a milestone, it isn't primarily a marker of sex equality, which remains a distant objective in the kingdom. Rather, it's an important indication that the monarchy now thinks it doesn't have to defer to the country's religious establishment.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 11/05/2017
» It's not a constitutional crisis. Technically, President Donald Trump was within his constitutional rights on Tuesday when he fired FBI Director James Comey. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is part of the executive branch, not an independent agency. But the firing did violate a powerful unwritten norm: that the director serves a 10-year, nonrenewable term and is fired only for good cause.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 07/02/2017
» It's no surprise that President Donald Trump initiated a Twitter attack Saturday on federal judge James Robart for freezing the executive order on immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. The ultimate fate of the order will depend on proceedings in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied the government's emergency request to reinstate the ban, and possibly even the US Supreme Court. But because judges issue rulings, not press releases, it's also up to civil society and the news media to defend the judge and the rule of law from the president's bluster.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 30/06/2016
» The phrase "constitutional crisis" looms large over the aftermath of Britain's vote to leave the EU. The possibility of such a crisis has been invoked in connection with what would happen if the Scottish parliament refuses to approve Britain's withdrawal; what might happen if Britain's main parliament should ignore the results of the Brexit referendum; and the possible consequences of taking seriously the popular petition calling for a second vote on the basis of a new "rule" requiring a 60% approval and 75% turnout on EU-related matters.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 02/02/2016
» Events in Tunisia look, on the surface, like a replay of 2011. A frustrated, unemployed man killed himself on Jan 17 in an act of protest that was intended to remind everyone of the self-immolation of a fruit seller that set off the Arab Spring. Protests then spread from city to city. They focused on rampant unemployment, which was one of the concerns of the protesters last time. Eventually, the government had to call a curfew to make the protests die down, which they eventually did.
News, Noah Feldman, Published on 08/12/2015
» The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) decision to designate the Chinese renminbi, commonly known as the yuan, as a global reserve currency will, over time, encourage the country's leadership to make the currency more tradeable. But the political implications of global reserve status may be more significant than the economic ones.