James5

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Finally got round to do a Wordle of James5. It’s obviously very dependent on what’s on the front page, near the top, rather than the site overall.

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Tonight I’m heading to Geneva for three weeks! I’m doing a subject called Institutions in International Law, run by Dr Andrew Mitchell, Bruce Oswald and Dr Tania Voon, wherein we visit a variety of international institutions to learn how they work and more about international law.

It’s going to be an absolutely amazing experience, but may mean blogging is on hold for a bit depending on how easy it is to access the internet in Geneva (and how much spare time we get). When I get back I’m sure I’ll have a ton of posts to do about what we learnt over there.

If you have a guest blog or link you’d like to post on James5, now’s the perfect time - so don’t hesitate to e-mail me.

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Fantastic news! I was recently accepted into the University of Melbourne 2008 WTO Moot Court team! What that means is that we’ve been given a hypothetical problem based around GATS and international trade law and we’ve got to do some written and oral submissions in January and March respectively.

What is also means is that for the next few weeks blogging is not the highest priority so expect less long posts and probably the same amount of miniposts. I’m throwing around some ideas about a post on WTO law so we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with a quote I found a few days ago which I found very inspiring:

The law perverted! And along with it all the collective forces of the nation! The law, I say, not only turned aside from its proper end, but made to pursue a directly contrary end! The law become the instrument, instead of the restrainer, of all kinds of cupidity! The law itself perpetrating the very iniquity that it is its function to punish! Certainly, if this is so, it is a serious matter, to which I should be allowed to call the attention of my fellow citizens. (Frédéric Bastiat, 1848)

(ps. If you’d like to write a guest post just email me)

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I am happy to announce that James5 will be taking part in BlogActionDay on October 15th. On that day blogs around the world will make one post about the environment to “get everyone talking about a brighter future”. Now I just have to pick an environmental topic to post on…

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Quick personal update, Uni has recommenced for semester two, so for the next 12 weeks priorities will shift towards studying away from blogging. However, this semester I am doing two subjects that may be of interest to justice-readers: Refugee Law and the Struggle for Universal Human Rights. I’ll endeavour to “student-blog” what I learn, hopefully it won’t be too dry.

I did have some other things planned, for instance taking a look at Emily Oster’s AIDS claims and some of the problems of economists thinking they know more then other social scientists; I really wanted to talk about what’s going on with Dr Haneef (it’s a real disgrace) - in the mean time check Andrew Bartlett’s posts which contain some excellent commentary on what’s going on; also wanted to go more into post-conflict situations balancing peace and justice (ala the Moses Chrispus Okello speech I linked to earlier); and I also wanted to dwelve more into the God-motive and examining the Laffer Curve.

So lots of stuff which will have to be shelved while uni is on. I’m sure my subjects will provide some excellent fodder though. Meanwhile, if anyone else has something they’d like to post please let me know, I’m really open to contributions!

one last thing, a very slow moving work in progress is JusticeFeeds - hopefully one day it’ll look ok (any designers want to lend me a hand with this site template?) and will be a collection of some of the excellent justice related feeds out there. So check that link in a while and it may be good.

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