Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Count Me Among the 10%

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Citechecking Just Got A Little Easier reports that a majority of the major law reviews have agreed in principle to try to limit articles to 70 pages after a web-based survey of law faculty found that 90% of the almost 800 responding faculty “agreed that articles are too long”.

I think the survey, which I filled out, was a very blunt instrument and this conclusion verges on a mistake. While it's true that some, maybe even many, law review articles are needlessly long — most often because they reinvent the wheel for the benefit of student editors — I think it's also true that some of the best articles are long for a reason: they describe something complex or genuinely new.

So, while I agree that one might wish to have a presumption that articles should be shorter than they are, I think a blanket rule of this nature would be unwise. (Of course, having written this and this and this, I would say that….)

I'm glad the law reviews haven't committed themselves to an iron-clad rule, but I'm worried that this will become an insurmountable bar in practice — especially for more junior scholars, who are the ones most likely to have something genuinely new to say, and who have the most need to say it in a way that is fully footnoted thus preemptively insulating themselves from certain types of criticism by their more senior colleagues (and believe me, I've been there).

Full text of the statement from the flagship law reviews at Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Texas, U. Penn., Virginia, and Yale follows.

Continue reading →

Posted in Law School | 4 Comments

Coral is Doomed? And Fish With It?

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

It seems somewhat strange that an effect this basic would only suddenly be noticed. There's no doubt the coral around here is dying, but that's thought to be caused by pollution, boats, and divers. This sounds altogether more serious:

Acid seas 'will kill off coral within 70 years': Coral reefs could be dead within two generations and cod replaced by jellyfish because of the acidification of the sea, scientists said yesterday.

The potentially disastrous problem, discovered only recently, is being caused by the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

…

Carol Turley, the head of science at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, told a conference in Exeter that the acidity of the sea was rising through chemical processes that turned carbon dioxide into carbonic acid.

She said: “It is happening now; nobody is saying it is not happening. It is O-level chemistry but no one noticed until 15 months ago. This is a rapid change that the world – and the organisms in the sea – have not seen for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions. …

Ms Turley said that cod and other fish ate plankton and shellfish that relied for their growth on calcium carbonate. If fish were not there, the sea would fill up with organisms such as jellyfish, which could eat other kinds of plankton.

“In cartoon form, you could say that people should be prepared to change their tastes from cod and chips to jellyfish and chips,” she said. “The whole composition of life in the oceans will have changed.”

Add in the already severe issue of the exhaustion of fish stocks from overfishing and profligate use of drift nets and I wonder if ocean collapse won't be the major environmental crisis of the mid-21st century.

I don't think I will like jellyfish sandwiches.

Posted in Science/Medicine | 1 Comment

Another Briton’s Account of Torture and Inhumanity at Gitmo

Posted on February 7, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Martin Mubanga was held at Gitmo, was found to be an enemy combatant by the first tribunal which 'evaluated' his case — not surprisingly since they wouldn't let him have access to any evidence or witnesses that might support his case. Why? The witnesses were not easily accessible in Guantanamo!

Now he's out, and he's describing a combination of torture and seriously inhumane treatment, despite having been, he says plausibly, utterly innocent.

How I entered the hellish world of Guantanamo Bay: For many months after Mubanga was seized in Zambia with the help of British intelligence and sent to Guantánamo, the American authorities maintained that he was a dangerous 'enemy combatant', an undercover al-Qaeda operative who had travelled from Afghanistan on a false passport and appeared to be on a mission to reconnoitre Jewish organisations in New York. But documents obtained by The Observer now reveal that by the end of last October the Pentagon's own legal staff had grave doubts about his status, and had overturned a ruling that he was a terrorist by Guantánamo's Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

Like the other three men who were released last month, Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi and Richard Belmar, Mubanga was held for one night at Paddington Green police station on his return to Britain and questioned. He was released unconditionally, the police having concluded within just a few hours that there was no evidence to sustain charges of terrorism.

While it's true that Mubanga's allegations of mistreatment are just allegations, they are consistent with memos by FBI agents who visited Gitmo, as later released under the Freedom of Information Act. Thus, this seems like additional plausible evidence of what's been going on in Rumsfeld's and Gonzales's little playground. (Sadly, treatment may have been even worse before some prisoners were shipped to Gitmo.) The kangaroo court nature of the status hearing is consistent with the account in Judge Joyce Hens Green's recent opinion

Contrast this view of reality with that provided at Washington dinner parties.

Posted in Guantanamo | 2 Comments

Pop Quiz

Posted on February 7, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Crooked Timber: Pop Quiz:

From the Guardian, a sample from the test administered to recruits to the Iraqi Police Force:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person is: a) torture; b) interview techniques; c) nterrogation techniques; d) informative and reliable.

How sad that the United States now has an Attorney General who would get this question wrong.

Posted in Iraq Atrocities | 1 Comment

Linux’s Main Hurdle

Posted on February 7, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Joho the Blog: The Myth of MythTV

“Shouldn't be a problem” in linux-talk means that it requires only one Linux Day to get up and running, where a Linux Day equals 8 hours of hacking by someone who knows linux inside out (Greg), 12 hours of “helpful suggestions” from a Windows user, and two pizzas.

You could write the same thing about Windows, only sometimes the problems are insoluble, but the selling point is that the problems tend to happen when you add something after the initial install.

Posted in Software | Comments Off on Linux’s Main Hurdle

If You Use Firefox You Need To Read This

Posted on February 7, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Someone has come up with a Firefox exploit — one that doesn't affect IE users!

You can find links to the details, at Boing Boing: Shmoo Group exploit. Here, however, is the simple info on how to protect yourself (probably):

1) Goto your Firefox address bar. Enter about:config and press enter. Firefox will load the (large!) config page.

2) Scroll down to the line beginning network.enableIDN — this is International Domain Name support, and it is causing the problem here. We want to turn this off — for now. Ideally we want to support international domain names, but not with this problem.

3) Double-click the network.enableIDN label, and Firefox will show a dialog set to 'true'. Change it to 'false' (no quotes!), click Ok. You are done.

I say “probably” because even though this fix works for me, there are reports that it doesn't work for everyone. The test of the exploit is here.

Posted in Software | 12 Comments